


Faithful, even in love

by shetlandowl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Christmas Fluff, Don't jump out of anything higher than two floors, Established Relationship, I didn't kill Tony I promise, Inadvisable courtship behavior, M/M, Mention of death as part of war, Mention of death from cancer, Mention of miscarriage (indirectly/implicitly), Modern Royalty, Protective Steve Rogers, Rated teen for: mentions of terrorist attack and Steve's memories and experience in war, Sick Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve just doesn't know that, Virgin Tony Stark, oh boy how have I not tagged this before?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-06-11 16:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15319905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: The love story between two monarchs who should never have fallen in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story I've wanted to tell forever. It isn't told in a linear narrative, so we begin with the present and tie these experiences to important parts of their story in the past. If you'd like to go back to the very beginning, [this is how they first met](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13194126). 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

“Your Majesty, I need you to come with me.”

“One moment,” Steve told Bucky quietly. T’Challa was still introducing the subject of sustainable agriculture in Wakanda. There was plenty, it seemed, that Steve would have to talk to him about later, and he took the time to finish jotting his thoughts down for later reference. 

“Right now, Steve,” Bucky hissed, and Steve looked up at him immediately. His friend’s face was ashen and set in grim determination. It had been a lifetime since Steve had seen that expression on any man’s face, let alone Bucky’s. Steve got to his feet at once, smoothly buttoning his suit jacket and leading the way to the nearest exit with Bucky at his back. 

As soon as the door was shut behind them, Bucky wasted no more time with polite formalities. He took the king by his elbow and towed him to the nearest office. The office had been cleared of its intended occupant so that Bucky and Steve could use the room in private. 

Without a word, Bucky dumped his king into the chair and turned on Al Jazeera. 

“There has been an attack on the Kingdom,” he told Steve as they both watched the recent footage of six military jets taking off from Eisenturm. Like most of the military’s technology, the fighter jets were of Tony’s own design. “I can’t reach Rhodes or Natasha. Pepper’s last text said that Lila is safe.”

Five of the jets were finished with the traditional steel grey, designed with Tony’s unrivaled stealth technology to help them navigate unseen and undetected by any contemporary technology. The last plane was gilded red and gold, and it carried the king. It was unmistakable and designed to be visible from the air and from the ground, even by the naked eye. 

In the final seconds of the footage, the five stealth planes took formation around the leading jet and vanished into thin air. 

Steve couldn’t move, he couldn’t find his words. For the people of Consone who looked into the sky, they would see their king coming to their defense. They would know they were not alone. Their enemies would never know if five jets followed the king or five hundred, but even alone the king would fight, and vengeance followed in his wake. 

“When,” Steve whispered, his voice hoarse from fear. He remembered the last time he saw his father, leading a small group of soldiers into the night. He remembered finding his father’s body days later in an unmarked mass grave with the rest of his men. He remembered carrying his father back to their camp, he remembered making the call to his mother. 

He remembered telling Tony he would see him on Wednesday. They had been invited to see a school play; the Year 10 students were performing Molière’s Tartuffe, and Steve had been brushing up on his French in the hopes of speaking to the kids without a translator. 

“Thirty minutes ago. I haven’t heard from anyone,” Bucky reported with intentional calm, his jaw set in his determination. He would stick to the clear facts, however scant and unsatisfying they were. “The walls must be up; there is no communication with Consone. The only message we received was from Pepper regarding Lila’s safety.”

As if in concert with Bucky’s explanation, the footage on the screen shifted to an abrupt montage of both professional and amateur video clips of the gates coming down around what was old Machtberg, and the new defensive walls rising from the ground around old Terrini. The Kingdom was sealed, and no soul would pass in or out of the country until it was deemed safe. 

Steve watched in stunned horror as soldiers manned their stations along the walls and gates of the kingdom. He was on the wrong side of that wall; he was safe in Berlin, while Tony defended their people alone. 

“Where,” Steve demanded to know, but Bucky wouldn’t look away from the news on the TV to meet his eyes. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky regretfully admitted. “Steve, I know nothing. I got you as soon as I got Pepper’s message.”

The news anchor interrupted the footage to introduce an audio recording of the king’s address to the royal guard. They called it his final speech. 

_Soldiers, it is with a heavy heart that I confirm what you have undoubtedly heard: we are at war. Approximately ten minutes ago, we were alerted to an attack on our people in Lumine. Twelve hundred of our citizens are under siege as we speak. As the elite and personal guard of the Crown, it falls to you to follow your King in defense of the Kingdom and its citizens._

On the screen, new footage taken from a great distance showed the king’s red and gold jet getting shot out of the sky. It fell to the earth in a lifeless arc, trailing smoke and fire. 

Two black fighter jets dove after it in pursuit. 

_His Majesty, my husband, once told me that only the dead know the end of war. There is no glory to be had, only loss; only death and misery. Yet a threat to the dignity and security of any life in our kingdom is a threat to all we hold dear. What you are now asked to perform for the citizens of our Kingdom is an act of selfless humility: to recognize that the love the people of Lumine feel for their families is equal to that love you feel for your own, and to act with no less conviction in their defense._

_Per tradition and by the will of the Crown, no soldier will precede the King into battle. He is the first to raise a weapon in the defense of his people, for the fate of his people is his most sacred privilege. No heart is more humbled than mine for the honor to stand beside each of you; to shield each of you as best as I can; and, if necessary, to give my life in your defense._

_May our children forgive us._

_Long live our people. Long live Consone._

“Long live the king,” the anchor echoed in a somber tone. “No comment yet from King Steven, who is currently in Berlin to negotiate the potential expansion of Stark Intellicrops into the global market.”

Steve stood and took the remote from Bucky to mute the commentary. “What is the nearest foreign airport to Lumine?” 

“Venice,” Bucky replied without having to look it up. “We can be here in 63 minutes.”

“No,” Steve disagreed, because there was no way a plane Tony designed for him would be that slow. But Bucky shook his head and quietly explained, “Steve, we can’t fly over Consone, we have to go around. We don’t even know if the King will be in Lumine.”

“The King is not subject to his own law!” Steve snapped, venting his crippling fear and hopeless rage on his friend. “I will not sit and wait here for some talking head to tell me whether my husband is dead or alive. With or without your help I will be there,” he finished with a promise. “If it is the last thing I do, I will be there. And I will be there well within the goddamn hour.”

Bucky had been there when Steve had fought his way behind enemy lines to find out what happened to his father. He’d been there when they had been too late. 

“Then we don’t go to Lumine,” he suggested, including himself in Steve’s plan as if there had never been another alternative. “The border to Bavaria is the closest. It’ll be confusing as hell, I don’t think there is a law in place for a king to be outside the kingdom under martial law since he’s the judge, jury, and executioner, but—”

The spark of an idea lit behind Steve’s eyes. Bucky frowned in his confusion, but something in Steve had come back to life. 

_Hope._

“Then that's what we do, Buck. We break the law.”


	2. Chapter 2

Steve and Bucky crawled out of the sewer drains gasping for breath and mostly alive. They dragged themselves up onto solid ground, scraping clusters of debris and filth off their faces while trying to catch their breath without breathing in too deeply. 

“I hate you,” Bucky groaned between disgusted gasps of air. Breaking into the sewage drains had been bad, but after a few minutes, their noses had adjusted. But when they had gotten to the point of the wall where wading through the filth was no longer an option and they had to swim in it - see through it - he had never more wanted to give up on his asshole friend. 

Steve grunted as he tried to sit up, but every part of his body ached in a terrible way and he only managed to roll onto his side. “I would, too,” he replied with a huff of dry amusement. He still wasn’t sure why Bucky had followed him, but he’d been grateful not to do it all alone. 

Slowly, Steve pushed himself up on his knees. He wiped a hand as clean as he could in the grass around them, then tried to clear out his eyes so he could take a look around them. Before he had to wonder if anyone had noticed them breaking into the country and whether he’d need to discuss border control with Tony in the future, he saw a dozen armed soldiers on horseback making their way up the craggy, inhospitable mountainside. 

Steve punched Bucky in the shoulder. “On your feet. We’re about to be arrested.” 

“Fuck you,” Bucky grumbled even as he rolled to his side and onto his knees with a great heave. Whatever else he might have said was lost in the thundering clapping of hooves as the cavalry neared. 

The soldiers readied and aimed their weapons as one woman leapt off her horse to approach them. “By the will of the King, you are under arrest for illegal en…” she trailed off as Steve found his feet and stood to face her. She stared at him with a sudden chill, then, stepping closer, she whispered, “...Your Majesty?”

The loaded weapons were turned up to the sky then quickly holstered as the soldiers realized who stood before them. Steve raised his hand to show his appreciation, and when he spoke, he addressed them all. 

“I am your king,” he said, speaking as simply and as calmly as he could while trying not to get any more of the sewage in his mouth. “I am home, and I need your help.”

*** 

Tony was alive. He was still in Lumine as part of the rescue efforts. 

Two soldiers elected to walk back to their posts so that Steve and Bucky could make the return journey on horseback. They were both quickly directed to the showers and given all they needed to wash up, including fresh clothes to wear. The limited availability of spare clothing at the outpost meant that both Bucky and Steve were left with the green and gold colors of the cavalry and their unmistakable insignia, the crossed sword and trumpet. 

When the General finally arrived to personally address any of the King’s requests, his first order of business was to have a photo taken with Bucky and the King, both veterans of infantry, with the cavalry’s crest clearly visible on their jackets. In the time it took for the photos to be taken, all-terrain vehicles were arranged to transport Steve and Bucky to the nearest clearing for an airlift to Lumine. They were sent off with many well-wishes, expressions of gratitude, and a promise from the General to reach out to the commanding officers in Lumine to inform Tony that Steve was on the way. 

“Your Majesty,” the chopper pilot said a few minutes into their journey, speaking at a comfortable volume thanks to the Starktech noise insulation of their headsets. “The attack targeted the adjoining library and police station in Lumine. Ninety-two injured and fifty-seven fatalities, including one pilot. General Ira Arionne has personally relayed messages ahead of us to inform His Majesty, King Anthony, of Your Majesty’s arrival. All he has been able to share with me is that His Majesty, King Anthony, and the Iron Legion are currently serving as part of the relief and are unavailable for comment. Edelfrau Potts has been reached and awaits Your Majesty at camp.”

“What of the city? The survivors, the citizens, what do they need?”

“Electricity and heating has not yet been restored to the affected parts of the city, Your Majesty, but generators have allowed medical staff to proceed uninterrupted. Many survivors who did not require hospitalization elected to remain at the camp near their families. I hear additional generators are being prepared to supplement current needs if electricity is not restored by nighttime; in this region, the temperature drops ten degrees at night, at best.”

“We know,” Bucky told the pilot before Steve had to remind the young man that not too long ago, this craggly region was a bitter battleground where straggling bands of starving soldiers had gathered - making the climb in small, unnoticed groups - until they had the numbers to take the farmlands back from Stane. Steve’s father had always pressed on the importance of food and water: controlling the food supply was the first step in taking their country back. 

He hadn’t been there to see his plan carried out, but he had been right. 

Even children growing up in old Terrini were not taught the full devastation of their hard-won independence. Even now, unified and increasingly prosperous, it was too soon. Those from old Machtberg knew next to nothing. 

The sun was still high in the sky, but the three of them saw clearly in the distance how the buildings and lights in Lumine came back to life all at once. Something about it felt like a victory, and as Bucky clapped Steve gently on the back, Steve could feel the tension in his chest ease. Every minute brought him closer to his husband, and Steve needed him like he needed his own heartbeat. He needed to see that Tony was alive, and together they would fix this. Together, there was nothing they couldn’t do. 

*** 

Tony was waiting for him when the chopper finally landed outside of Lumine. His flight suit was still recognizable, covered in soot and mud as it was, and Steve flew to him on his own volition the second his feet touched solid ground. In an unusual public display of affection, Steve hauled his husband into his arms. The King was already a large man, but in his husband’s presence he seemed to grow larger than life, enveloping Tony in his arms and hiding him against his heart where he would be safe from all the dangers of the world, one hand gripping the back of Tony’s grimy uniform while he cradled the back of Tony’s head with the other. 

Tony shivered in his arms. He pressed his forehead against Steve’s shoulder, and with shaking fingers he clutched at the cavalry jacket Steve wore. A lifetime of instruction and coaching made any outward expression of vulnerability impossible, but Steve wasn’t only his spouse and partner. Rather than a Crown Prince or a Prince Consort, Steve was his equal, in rank and in power, and while titles meant little to Steve, he had learned that it made a difference to Tony, who had never had an equal. 

“They are dead,” Tony whispered, his words breaking and borderline hysterical in his shock. “So many dead.”

Steve shook his head and only tried to hold him closer. He pressed a loving kiss to Tony’s temple and his hair, unbothered by the clusters of dust and dirt clumped into his greasy hair. “You protected our people,” Steve told him softly, almost in apology. “I should have been here with you, Tony. It should have been me.” 

“You were _safe_ ,” Tony insisted, his voice breaking on the word. Steve’s heart ached at the sound, and he cast around desperately for a private space in all this chaos. There were no buildings, no walls, no place where they could speak unheard. 

He whipped around as it occurred to him how they had arrived to Lumine. 

“Evacuate the chopper!” he bellowed at the pilot and gunman. They scrambled to obey, and Bucky hauled the door open so that Steve could climb back onboard with Tony. He circled the chopper and made sure all doors and windows were shut before establishing a loose perimeter to give them some privacy. 

Steve and Tony could still be seen through the window panels, but at least there they could speak unheard. In the cramped legroom, Steve kneeled down at Tony’s feet. He got his arms around Tony’s body, and Tony bent to cradle as much of Steve as he could, desperate to hide his face against his husband’s neck for comfort. 

“I killed two men,” Tony confessed with a broken sob. “At close range, I shot them. Steve, I watched them die.”

“Would that I could bear those memories for you,” was all Steve could say. “You are not alone anymore.”

With jerky, aborted movements, Tony nodded against Steve’s shoulder. Steve felt as Tony inhaled deeply, taking that moment of peace between them to steady himself before sitting up straight to smile down at his husband. His eyes were red and his cheeks were wet from tears Steve had never heard him shedding. The wet lines streaked his face, darkened by a fine layer of dust and soot. With great care, Steve cupped Tony’s face between his hands, and with an unhurried, gentle touch, he wiped Tony’s face clear of tears and grime. 

A shaky smile wobbled across Tony’s face, as if he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry again. “You were safe in Berlin,” he whispered in accusation. “It gave me comfort, knowing you were safe in Berlin. Whatever happened to me, you would live.”

“That’s not how this works,” Steve told him, then pursed his lips as he reconsidered. On second thought, he said, “That’s not how _I_ work. My place is here, at your side. What is left to be done?” he asked in the end, needing to get Tony thinking practically to help him think clearly.

“I got the city reconnected to the power grid. They have power, they have heat. We already have more water than necessary for washing and for consumption. Resources are well met, and the citizens of Lumine have been… Steve, they are bringing food,” Tony said with a tremble in his voice, but this time he spoke with a smile, moved to tears with relief and gladness. “They will not stop bringing food, and books, and blankets. Families are visiting survivors, but those who have no families are being visited by locals. I want to stay,” Tony told him, before Steve had even had a chance to argue that they retire somewhere to rest and recover before rejoining the recovery efforts in the morning. “The people showed me something I did not know. The locals are making survivors feel less alone. They sit and speak with strangers about their families, their loved ones, and it is helping them. It is the least I can do.”

“It is the least we can do,” Steve corrected gently, and watched as Tony’s smile visibly grew steadier and more relieved. “We will spend the first night with our people, but in the morning, if no emergencies interfere, we retire and rest in private. Agreed?”

Tony leaned forward and pressed his smiling lips against Steve’s. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, or even a desperate expression of relief to be reunited. It was a connection, a small moment of affection and gratitude. “I love you,” Tony whispered, as if even now, alone in the military chopper, he wanted to be sure only Steve heard his words. “I cannot believe you are here. I cannot believe I could grow to love you more. And tomorrow morning, we retire at your discretion.”


	3. Sharing the joy of Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later that day, Tony helps the nurses bring survivors their supper. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Each chapter that follows visits a new survivor, and shares a short story about the kings' life._

Steve had the energy to help manage volunteers, but Tony stayed with the recovering survivors. Those with serious injuries were flown to hospitals in nearby cities, while those who had lost their homes in the attack were offered long-term accommodation in the nearest royal palace. Patients with minor injuries were kept overnight for observation. The emergency medical camp built around the needs of their patients was impermanent and unsuited to serious medical procedures, but it was enough for most, and rather than flooding neighboring city hospitals, the doctors of Lumine advised those who could to stay and, more importantly, spend time with their family and friends.

Only, not everyone there had family and friends. 

Tony helped nurses bring patients water and some of the hearty food made by the local people in Lumine. Many of those who did not have visitors were fast asleep, and Tony only peeked in long enough to assure himself that they slept peacefully. Eventually, he came to the makeshift room of a young man who was not only awake, but caught staring into the middle distance with unhappy and unseeing eyes. Given the events of the day, Tony didn’t think twice about it. He glanced at the clipboard at the foot of the bed that clearly indicated the patient’s name, allergies or relevant medical history, and language of preference, then cleared his throat to announce himself. 

“Orfeo, I bring supper. May I enter?”

The young man was startled and looked around to see who had spoken. When Orfeo saw that it was the King himself, his whole body went still and his face drained of color. 

“Your—Your Majesty? Is that really you?” he whispered in secret, as if he was communicating with a hallucination and didn’t want anyone to notice in case he was crazy. 

Tony smiled when he wanted to chuckle, and held up the platter of food and drink that he was carrying. “Supper, sir.”

“Please! Oh, lord, of course come in, Your Majesty,” Orfeo rushed to say, but when he tried to sit up out of respect, he abruptly stiffened and grunted in discomfort. Tony hurried in and sat the platter down. 

“What’s the matter, sir?” Tony asked, trying to ignore the gnawing fear that he’d only do more harm than good by startling the survivors he visited. 

“Nothing,” Orfeo whispered, then very carefully reached under his blanket to pull out a soggy bag of ice. Judging by how he’d pulled it out from between his legs, Tony could only grimace to himself in sympathy. 

Tony held up its glass container so Orfeo could drop it in, then he placed it on the bedside table provided for each patient. 

“Do you need another ice pack, Orfeo?” he asked, gently but firmly so that the young man might feel compelled to answer honestly. After all, most would not otherwise want to ask their monarch for favors. 

“No, Your Majesty,” Orfeo promised after a beat of silence. “They were for swollen stitches, sir. I feel better. I can’t believe you said my name,” he mumbled to himself in the end.

“Would you like some company, perhaps?” Tony asked instead of addressing his comment. 

“Uh,” was all the young man could say at first in his shock. “But… you’re the King?”

“That I am, and I have nothing more pressing to do this night than to reassure myself that my people are well. I am no doctor, but it has been a tragic day and I do not wish for any person to feel alone. Are you from Lumine, Orfeo?”

“I work in Lumine, my family is from Viole. It is a village not so far from here,” he explained, and Tony took a seat to listen. “My mother could not come, and my girlfriend wanted to come see me, but I told her to stay in Viole. I do not want for her to see me… like this,” he finished half-heartedly, gesturing at his face and upper body. Orfeo had clearly been thrown by the blast, and while his injuries were not severe or life threatening, he had many bruises and a number of minor stitches. 

“How come you did not wish for her to visit?” Tony wondered. Orfeo shrugged uncomfortably and looked down at his hands in his lap, color rising in his cheeks and up his neck. 

“In the attack,” he said quietly, and Tony was struck by how young he seemed. “I was certain I was gonna die. I thought I’d never see my family, my Éliane again.”

Orfeo trailed off in silence, not unlike a man struggling to find his way through a haze. Tony watched him patiently, avoiding glancing at distractions like his watch or his phone while he gave Orfeo time to clear his thoughts. 

“I have wanted to marry Éli as long as I have known her, Your Majesty,” he eventually confessed. “I was twelve and she was ten. Her family was from far away, but they fled during the war and hid in the same camp as my family. When we talked, I forgot we were hiding from a war. But ten years have passed and I worry she will say no, that we are too young. That it is not the right time,” he said with a grumble of irritation. “But how do you know when is the right time?” 

“Answering ‘why’ you wish to marry may help you answer ‘when.’ However, neither why nor when is as important as whom,” Tony said slowly and with care, “and to me, Orfeo, it sounds like you are very certain of whom you wish to marry.” 

Orfeo pressed his lips together and was quiet for some time. “What if I am wrong?” he asked after a long silence. “What if we are wrong for each other?”

“People grow and change. That is life. But marriage is not about who is perfectly right, or who appeals to a list of preferences, it is about who brings out the best in you,” Tony said gently, all the while knowing Rhodey would be infinitely better with such a conversation. “There were many differences between myself and his Majesty, my husband, and I am grateful for all the ways he has changed my life. He challenges me every day, not with arguments or demands, but by simply being himself. His presence in my life has changed me, I could not be the man I was again. The changes are small at first, you understand; what suit or tie I will wear, or when we eat, for example. Over time, these changes grow, and for that, he has made my life richer and more beautiful than I ever imagined.” 

*** 

After their wedding and the subsequent unification, Eisenturm was named the capital of Consone and Steve moved into the Royal Palace. What had been King Howard and Queen Maria’s wing was remade for them, leaving Tony’s apartments vacant for their future heir. 

Eisenturm was the largest city in the kingdom, with nearly half a million citizens living in the city proper, and twice as many people commuting daily into the city. For Steve who grew up on a remote farm and rarely saw gatherings larger than a few hundred, the adjustment to life in Eisenturm had been difficult. Before their marriage, Steve lived in a two bedroom apartment he had shared with his mother in Fiorera, the capital of Terrini. He cooked his own breakfasts, he vacuumed his own floors, and more often than not, he did his own laundry. Moving from such comfortable independence to the gilded marble halls decorated with priceless artwork of centuries past took its toll on Steve.

The first week had been fine. Steve enjoyed the lingering freedom in the happy haze following their honeymoon. It was easy then to pretend they were still unburdened by responsibilities. But as Steve slowly faced all the ways his normalcy was taken from him, he grew more silent and withdrawn. He threw himself into his language studies, reading endlessly and working with tutors, all the while Tony watched from a distance as the smallest details ate away at his husband’s happiness. None of the things that irritated Steve were out of the ordinary for Tony, and that frustrated any attempt he made to predict and mitigate issues before Steve set his jaw and fell silent in his anger. One morning Tony learned that their laundry service folded Steve’s underwear into triangles, and another afternoon, he caught Steve going through both their desks to recover his art pens and pencils where the staff had mixed them in with everything else. The worst problem was the requirement to announce their intention to leave the palace grounds, then await an escort. The rule chafed at Tony, but it was all he had ever known. To Steve, it was downright insulting. 

So while Steve labored over languages and customs by hiding away in reading rooms and libraries where nobody would bother him, Tony oversaw the unification. Steve helped where he could, but language limited him severely, and Tony had saved up enough patented designs to open to the global market so he could devote his full attention to the politics without interrupting their cash flow. Their countries were opposites in almost every way, from the material and technical backgrounds, to the services they needed. Machtberg had a highly skilled, highly paid population, while Terrini farmers and craftsmen were still recovering from decades of Stane’s dictatorship and years of war. If the unification was to work, they would have to walk the fine line between providing Terrini too much help and angering the wealthy with high taxes, and doing so little that their initial inequalities turned into a salient class divide. 

In the early days of winter, once the issues of taxes, citizenship, and social benefits were finalized, Tony finally gained some traction. His first victory had been a fellowship for graduate work in trauma counseling. On the heels of that success passed an initiative to fund employment opportunities for recent graduates from old Machtberg in Terrini, whether they were civil engineers, school teachers, or medical care providers. They called it the Queen’s Exchange Initiative in Sarah’s memory. Steve had been behind both proposals, and as satisfying as standing in Parliament and seeing the votes on their proposal cast in their favor, Tony’s victory was still outdone by the grateful smile Steve greeted him with later that day. 

Their victories aligned with the holiday season, and fortunately, the seasonal excitement mellowed hard-working politicians with the joy of Christmas festivities. It was the first time since their honeymoon that Tony had the chance to devote Steve his full attention, and he didn’t waste a minute of it. 

In their respective childhood kingdoms, Tony and Steve both grew up celebrating Christmas, but in vastly different ways. Due to its historic poverty and agrarian culture, Terrini did not develop into populous cities or benefit from widespread post-industrial development. Much like their Catholic Italian neighbors to the south, the people of Terrini celebrated Christmas hand in hand with the church. Its sparse population and scattered villages meant that the church became the uniting institution for all holidays around the year. For Christmas, large, elaborate nativity scenes brought a community together, from the carpenters who carved the trough and the statues, the grandmothers who sewed their costumes, to the school children who painted the lightbulbs and dipped wax candles to decorate the scenes. A pageantry of lights, craftsmanship, and community poured together over potlucks and folk music to celebrate family and community on the holiest nights of the year. 

By contrast, from its shared history with Bavaria and Bohemia, Machtberg embraced Christmas with vibrant markets and hardy food. Antique gilded carousels were assembled in parks and town squares all across the kingdom, inviting families to celebrate the festivities of the season. Everywhere the smell of flavorful sausages, roasting chestnuts, and mulled wine filled the air, and no expense was spared to add the sparkle of excitement in every child’s eyes. 

Tony couldn’t wait to introduce Steve to all of it, and after an early end to an otherwise long day, he raced back to the Palace to find his husband. After a short search, Tony found him in the ground floor library. 

“I see this is where you have been hiding today, Your Majesty.”

Steve cursed and jumped at the unexpected sound of Tony’s voice. Tony laughed in his triumph, and leaned in to steal a kiss while his husband still looked disgruntled. Steve had found a seat near one of the smaller fireplaces in a corner, well concealed from staff and politicians alike. It was unclear how long he had been hiding in his books, but this late in the year, it was difficult to mind the hours at all. No sunshine shone through the library’s tall windows, and the world outside the palace looked so bleak that only the occasional dusting of snowflakes gave depth to the darkness of the winter’s day. 

Steve closed his story book when Tony took a seat beside him. “Lunch break?”

“No, we concluded the day early,” Tony said with a smile and scooted his armchair closer. “In the spirit of ‘my husband deserves to stop studying and start celebrating Christmas.’”

“Tony,” Steve said in the same quiet, cautioning voice that he used when he wanted Tony to stop worrying. “It is only the first week of December, we have time—”

“Then in the spirit of ‘we all deserve to focus on what is important in our lives’? Progress has been admirable, my love, but you have not left the palace in over two weeks. Must I guilt you into a jacket? Because I will.”

“Tony, it’s not—”

“You have studied the history and language of our country for months, but should a king not also know his people? A wise man once told me so, regrettably I have forgotten his name… perhaps if he left his home more often,” Tony lamented with a dramatic sigh that left Steve helplessly facepalming. “Ah, of course, the Hermit King. Lo, he was so handsome! Now he stews in his mantle of cobwebs. So lonely now that he no longer allows his faithful husband to polish his crown, his very large, heavy—”

Steve spun the book over in his hand and smacked Tony’s arm with the flat of it before he got any further. “Tony!” he hissed, his cheeks blushing red with the effort not to laugh. But instead of words of chastisement or discomfort, Steve sounded indignant. “When have I ever denied my husband when he wants to ‘polish my crown’?”

“Just last night,” Tony started with a little sniff for added pity, but Steve smacked him again. 

“Because you said you wanted to ‘polish my crown,’ Tony - you’re a menace, I’m not rewarding you for that behavior.”

“Hearken! How I, his devoted spouse—”

“Stop hearken-ing and lo-ing, I’ll get dressed!” Steve caved in record time. He got up and took his book with him, but before he walked out of sight he paused and turned back to Tony. “Unless my devoted spouse feels we have time for one quick polish...?”

Tony climbed to his feet in a hurry and all but chased his husband out of the library, through a glimmering hall of mirrors, and up a spiral staircase shortcut through a closet to their bedroom. From there, Steve lifted him into his arms and carried him the rest of the way. 

*** 

The jaunty bounce in Steve’s step was so infectious that Tony couldn’t bring himself to look away. Even in the dark, December afternoon, Steve’s smile shone with excitement. He held Tony’s hand in his, and he made Tony feel so warm and safe that he could have pocketed his gloves then and there. 

All of Steve’s joyful excitement evaporated as they descended the stairs of the palace and he noticed the small caravan of cars awaiting them. Bucky and Natasha were standing at the passenger side door of the black stretch car, and a total of eight security officers waited to climb into the two SUVs that would lead and follow the kings’ car. 

He came to an immediate halt several yards out. “Tony,” he whispered, “I thought we were going to a Christmas market. Why can’t we walk?”

Tony sighed inwardly and tried to resist his initial temper at the conversation they never seemed to resolve. 

“For our safety,” Tony started to say, but Steve clammed up before he could finish his sentence. 

“I lived in Fiorera for many years without armed escort, Tony. So did my mother.”

“This is a little more delicate,” Tony said as calmly as he could. “We are gay monarchs. We don’t have an heir. We just united two kingdoms, not everyone is happy about that. We need to be careful.”

“This isn’t a state visit, or a scheduled appearance. Nobody will know we are there. Unless that’s what you want three cars and ten security guards to do; it only invites trouble. How am I supposed to get to know the people from behind a wall of security, Tony?”

Tony pursed his lips, unsure of how to answer him at first. “That is how it is done, Steve.”

“That was not how my mother did it,” Steve told him in a whisper. “Tony, I’ll follow the rules in the Palace. I’ll be quiet about people cleaning up after me like I’m a bedridden child, I’ll give up my privacy. But nobody - not your ancestors, not Queen Elizabeth, and not even you are going to tell me how to connect with people.”

“Queen Sarah came to power under different circumstances, and Terrini was a different place. Mächtingen do not expect us to, to rub elbows with them at a Christmas market. There will be knives and alcohol, if it gets dangerous—”

“I am the most dangerous man in this city, Tony!” Steve snapped, his words forced through gritted teeth. “If you are worried about safety, fine. Bucky and Natasha can come with us. But no cars, no royal guard, no—no us versus them. You said you wanted an equal,” he finished more gently, and hearing his own words repeated back to him, Tony looked at Steve more carefully. “You wouldn’t let me abdicate to marry you as a Prince Consort. Remember why.”

Tony’s mouth twisted in what wasn’t quite a smile or a grimace. Steve’s words left a bad taste in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. As a crown prince and an only child, he had been groomed for his inevitable role as king, but there had never been a question about whose kingdom it would be, or whose style he would follow. Yet even Tony freely admitted that what he had learned from Queen Sarah’s example had made him a better man. 

The only difference was, Queen Sarah never told him what to do: Tony had made intentional changes after seeing her, and he chose what to adopt and what to leave out. He couldn’t take that power from Steve, and, selfishly, he would never see the leader his husband could grow to be if he went back on his word now. In so many ways, going to a crowded and badly lit Christmas market without security was the worst idea he had ever heard. But not all of Tony’s decisions would ever be as easy as the choice between respecting his husband, or fearing the remote (and admittedly infinitesimal) possibility of being assassinated in his own city. 

Tony held out his hands again for Steve. They were bare and already too cold for comfort, and Steve closed his hands over Tony’s to warm him up. He frowned to himself in surprise, and Tony heard Steve mutter ‘how?’ to himself in Cimbri before pressing Tony’s hands to his own face, one on each cheek, and covering them with his own big, warm hands. Tony had to bite his lips to keep from smiling like a fool. 

“You are right, Steve,” Tony said when his sudden spike of affection was under control. “My apologies, my love. But, I have not been near an uncontrolled crowd of people in my life. And in the dark?”

“And you never have to do it alone, mein Schafes,” Steve smiled at him between their joined hands framing his face, and Tony could feel his whole body trembling. “We will do it together.”

Tony could have cried from the effort to contain his sudden peals of laughter. “Mein Schafes?”

“Did I say it wrong?” Steve asked, his tone immediately changed from affectionate and warm to sharp focus. “Is it not my treasure? My sweetheart?”

It was enough to leave Tony weak in the knees. Quickly, he slipped his hands free of Steve’s gentle grip to wrap his arms around Steve’s neck and fall into his husband's embrace for an eager, laughing kiss. “No, my love,” Tony said between gentle, playful kisses, “it’s only that, when you say such words, it makes me wish we never had to leave the palace.” 

He never felt as safe as he did in Steve’s arms. Steve kissed him like every touch of their lips was a miracle, and he held Tony to his chest with what was only a fraction of his strength. The raw power in his body comforted Tony in a way no armed guard could, as if Steve inherently understood what support Tony craved. 

“Steve?” Tony whispered in the sacred space between them. Steve hummed softly in reply, his attention still caught between Tony’s soft, wet lips, and his half-lidded eyes. “Promise me, no other man will hear you say those words? Spare them only for me.”

“I swear,” Steve promised with no less devotion than on the day of their wedding. “For me it will only ever be you, mein Schafes.” 

*** 

They walked through the streets of Eisenturm hand in hand, and with Bucky and Natasha beside them, they looked like any two friendly couples making their way to the Christmas market. 

Tony had visited Christmas Markets every year of his life. As a child, he joined his father on the opening day of the market where Howard would give a short speech on why the holidays were so important to their families, culture, and kingdom. Tony had not continued that tradition, and instead made an effort to visit on a random day every year. 

People barely noticed them when they joined the market. They were as noteworthy as any other couple without blue sashes or ermine to decorate their respective wool coats, and instead of shiny designer shoes, they wore sturdy boots made for the winter weather. Tony had even indulged in wearing his old red and gold scarf that his mother had knitted for him while she was pregnant. They told him she had worked on it a little bit every day since she learned she was expecting, and she wanted her son to know how long she had thought of him and waited to see him. 

The hut with gluhwein had been their first stop, though Tony was the only one who went with wine - Steve immediately changed his mind to rum and hot chocolate, and both Bucky and Natasha chose something non-alcoholic while on duty. They made a point of visiting every artist hut and buying something small from each of them. Tony picked up a snow globe for Lila and a ceramic mug Natasha was eyeing. Steve, who had been curious but uncommitted to most of the trinkets sold at the huts, was the first to notice a shimmering ceramic Christmas tree ornament of them riding a toboggan. Their little cartoon-like selves looked so happy on this imaginary toboggan adventure that Steve picked it up and turned to show Tony immediately. They barely noticed Bucky paying the artist while they laughed over the adorable ornament. The artist bashfully told them that this was one of the few ornaments of the monarchs he had left - everything was selling like hotcakes, particularly an ornament depicting their wedding earlier that year. 

When Steve was next distracted ordering a third round of rum and cocoa, Tony quietly asked Natasha to arrange for the artist of the tobogganer kings ornament to make them a full collection of all ornaments depicting himself and Steve. If he were lucky, it would not take the artist long, and Tony could hide them on the tree in their private drawing room to surprise Steve. He and Steve had already agreed on only exchanging one handmade gift for Christmas, so if he could get it on the tree (instead of under it) before Christmas Day, it wouldn’t count. 

***

“I have never had so much fun at a Christmas market as I did today,” Tony laughed when they were back at the palace. 

Attendants helped them with their outerwear and provided them with indoor slippers to keep their feet warm, and Steve had to stop one young man from running off with his wool coat before he could fish his new favorite ornament out of the inner pocket. The attendant took the ornament from him with a promise to safely take the ornament to the kings’ drawing room. 

Tony made his way to Steve and wrapped his arms around him with a smile. “You genuinely adore that trinket.”

“You look so happy in it, mein Schafes,” Steve admitted softly, and he watched Tony like his whole world was right there in Tony’s smile. “How could I not love it?”

“Keep talking like that and I will drag you to bed with my bare hands,” Tony whispered against Steve’s jaw, but rather than worrying or delighting in Tony’s very genuine threat, Steve chuckled cheerfully and slipped his hands into Tony’s back pockets to squeeze him closer. 

“You showed me a part of how you celebrate Christmas, Tony,” Steve said to his very willing captive. “Before we sleep, I want to show you one way that my family celebrated, before the war. It won’t take long—”

Tony kissed him silent with a quick kiss. “I could not care less,” Tony assured him with a smile. “Should we ask for our coats again?”

“No, mein Schafes,” Steve said with a warm smile, “this we can do at home.”

Steve took Tony by the hand and led him to northern wing of the palace where the main kitchens were. It was too late in the day for the kitchen staff to be in attendance, but after enough clanging around, a handful of the nighttime household staff joined them to help Steve raid the pantry and find the tools he needed. 

“You… cooked?” Tony guessed, partly curious and partly in awe of how comfortably Steve was measuring out the flour and the sugar. He perched on a high stool at the workstation Steve had picked to work at, and watched Steve with rapt attention. 

“Bake, but it’s very simple, it takes almost no time,” Steve told him, sifting the flour with sugar and some salt onto his wooden surface. He formed it all into a little mountain, made a nest in the top, then cracked three eggs into the center. He added butter, lemon zest, and a splash of dry wine to the liquid before digging in with his hand to knead it into a dough. 

“A king who cooks,” Tony murmured, fascinated by the concept - as if this was a new species of monarch he was discovering in the privacy of his own palace. 

“Imagine that, a self-sustaining king,” Steve said with a quiet chuckle, and Tony would have laughed if he wasn’t busy watched Steve kneading the dough until it was smooth and uniform. Then Steve rolled the dough into a basketball sized ball, wrapped it in cellophane, and put it in the fridge to cool. 

Tony sat up straighter and eyed Steve while he washed his hands and started to clean up his counter space. “...Wait, is that all?” 

“That’s most of it,” Steve said and glanced his way with a grin before finishing cleaning after himself. “I thought we could go find Lila and Rhodes, maybe Bucky if he isn’t sick of us.”

“Sick of you, maybe,” Tony teased, then nearly fell off his stool with a big laugh when he quickly swerved to avoid Steve’s retaliatory pinch. 

By the time they had rounded everyone up and clarified that kitchen was not a funny new word for the theater, a library, or a drawing room, it had nearly been an hour. Steve made them coffee while a thoughtful staff attendant washed and cut up fruits for them to snack on while they gathered around a kitchen workstation with a built-in stove top. 

“Are you making struffoli?” Bucky asked as soon as Steve brought the wrapped up ball out of the fridge. 

Steve grinned and shook his head. “We are making struffoli,” he corrected with a playful note in his voice, “it’s not Christmas if only one of us works.”

He divided the ball into fifths, giving one to each of them. All they had to do was roll them into long, 1-2 centimeter thick ropes. It sounded easy, and Bucky even made it look easy, but for the rest of them it was mostly a failure. Natasha tried to do all her dough at first and made an uneven rope, while Tony got a little too carried away in thinking he could work the dough like clay. 

“This is impossible,” Rhodey sighed to himself while rolling his failed attempt back into a ball and glaring at Bucky’s finished superior dough rolling skills. 

Steve glanced at the lopsided roll Rhodey had made and his face twitched with the effort not to laugh. “You got it, you’re really close,” he said in encouragement, not that anyone believed him. Lila was the first to laugh at her uncle, and even Natasha chuckled to herself at Rhodey’s impatient huff. 

“You should stick to what you’re good at, Jim,” Bucky teased, “diplomacy and sitting on your—”

“Your hands,” Natasha finished for him before he cursed in front of a minor. Bucky realized his near-mistake quickly and reached for his cup of coffee instead. 

“I’ll help you, uncle,” Lila promised even though her rope of dough was only marginally better than Rhodey’s. 

“Thank you, Lila,” Rhodey replied with a smile. They switched positions and while Lila rolled out Rhodey’s failed dough again, Rhodey picked up a knife to start cutting Lila’s mostly okay rope into short circles. 

“How was the market?” he asked the table at large, since it had been a new experience for nearly all of them. “How was the food?”

“I think I ate two sausages and half a pound of potatoes on my own,” Tony announced immediately, because hell yes, and he’d do it again given the chance. “So much wine. Steve ate every sausage.”

“I did,” Steve confirmed shamelessly. “And the latkes? I’d go back tomorrow, it was so good.”

“Tell them about the ornament,” Natasha prompted. “It was cute.”

Rhodey looked up from cutting the second rope of dough, presumably to ask about the ornament Natasha mentioned, but he was distracted by a sudden waft of whatever Steve was making on the stove. 

“What the hell is that?” he muttered under his breath, indulging in deep breaths of the sweet, citrusy flavor warming the air. 

“That smells divine,” Tony seconded and watched as Steve’s pleased smile grew even brighter. 

“That is the smell of Christmas!” Steve said with a big grin, stirring the pot until it came together in a hot syrup. “Honey and lemon. We’ll fry the balls once you’re done with them and then we give them a turn in this.”

“Here, mine are ready,” Bucky said and held out his plate of dough dots, to which Natasha added hers. Lila went around to help Tony with his remaining half, and soon the three of them started a new plate with more struffoli. 

Lila ran around the counter to get to Steve’s side. “Can I help, Uncle Steve?” she asked, already dragging a chair over so she could be tall enough to work the pans. She’d grown up with Tony all her life, after all. She wasn’t used to hearing no. 

“You can gently stir the struffoli in the oil, with this,” he said as he helped her up on the chair and handed her the skimmer. “Careful, so the oil doesn’t splash. It’s hot.”

“Ma used hazelnuts when I was little, since that was what we had,” Steve told Lila (and the rest of them) while handing out cutting boards and a few bags of nuts to adults around the counter. There were almonds, hazelnuts, and macadamia nuts for them to pick from. Only Natasha and Rhodey seemed to get onboard with the unspoken request to chop nuts; both Bucky and Tony were happy to sit back and munch on handfuls of delicious nuts. “We didn’t get almonds until after the war, and I didn’t know what macadamia nuts were until… when did we go to America?”

“February,” Bucky told him while picking up another handful of almonds. “That place smelled. They don’t tell you that on TV.”

“They have twice as many people in New York City than we have in our entire country,” Steve pointed out. “Of course it’s dirty. I don’t know how they drink that water.”

Tony pursed his lips and tried not to laugh. “The sad part is, New York has the good water.”

Steve stared back at him, and Bucky’s jaw dropped. Bad water made sense if you had nine million people running around, but what did the rest of them drink if New York was considered good? 

“Uncle Steve, they’re looking pretty golden,” Lila said as she scooped up the fried balls in the skimmer. He quickly held up a plate draped with a paper towel so she could get them all on there before they did the next batch. 

“That’s perfect, thank you, Lila,” Steve said with a smile and helped her get the next plate of struffoli into the oil. “Anyway, I thought the macadamia nuts were tasty,” he continued in his earlier train of thought. “Ma always liked the hazelnuts best. I thought we could make a little of all three.”

With Lila’s help, Steve fried all the struffoli and separated the syrup into three different pans. They added one kind of nut to each pan of struffoli, stirred it all in, and at the end, they sat around the counter picking from a plate of each variety as they each considered which combination was best. Steve was fondest of his childhood hazelnut flavor, while the rest of them were split between hazelnuts and almonds. All, except for Bucky, who took to the macadamia nut struffoli with great gusto. 

Lila had to go to bed after that, but the rest of them stayed in the kitchen for hours, repeating the whole process over wine. They raided the kitchen pantry for dried fruit and more nuts that they could try in new combinations. The next batch they made with limoncello and dried fig and powdered with confectioners sugar, and they gobbled it down like wolves until their stomachs were too full and the sugar crash hit hard. Happy, warm from wine, and stuffed to the gills with sugar and fried dough, they begged off to bed and left round three for another day. 

*** 

Tony could not bring himself to stop smiling. The evening at the Christmas market had gone so well, and their night in the palace kitchen had been even better. The crowd had been intimidating at first, but Steve had been at his side from the start, and most people would only bow and smile as they passed. It had been a happy surprise to learn that while most adults did not say more to them that ‘good evening, your Majesties,’ the children were enamored. They all gravitated towards Steve, and they so openly adored him that Tony’s heart had ached with joy to watch Steve picking up one child after another, hugging them and posing for pictures without complaint. 

For all the years he had been told never to go further than a handshake with a commoner, high-fiving the ten year old who had nearly dropped and then immediately caught his hot chocolate had been indescribable. Three young women had showed him the right way to eat a Trdelník without spilling, and it was a minor miracle his Steve had not come home with a sugar crash for all the rum hot cocoa he was drinking. But they had made it home without incident, and nothing worse than armfuls of presents and gift bags to carry back to the palace. Or, more specifically, for Bucky to carry back to the palace. 

When Steve wanted to end the night by sharing a memory of his Christmas tradition, Tony had kissed his husband to within an inch of his life. The kitchen had been a plot twist - Tony had never visited the palace kitchens longer than to thank people for their good work - but standing around the table with Steve and their friends, rolling dough and frying it up, Tony could have burst with gladness. 

That night, happy, pleasantly tired, and warm, Tony drifted easily into a comfortable sleep. Steve slept on his back and Tony always tucked in close to the crook of Steve’s arm with his head pillowed on Steve’s bicep, sometimes on his stomach and sometimes on his side. From the first night they had shared a bed, they slept in the same way, Tony shielded by Steve, with Steve’s arm wrapped around his body so that his hand loosely cupped Tony’s hip or his ass. Their habit was born of a jumble of different feelings. Sexual interest, romantic impulse to be close, the darker, possessive desire to hold on even as they slept. For Steve it was reassurance. He had lost enough of his family to unseen danger, and now, his most basic instinct was to keep Tony close and safe. 

For Tony, it had started as a comforting, loving gesture. In all the time Tony had known Steve, Steve had been respectful of his boundaries. So in the months leading up to their marriage Tony would often invite his visiting fiancée into his bed, or take matters into his own hands and crawl into Steve’s. 

On an unremarkable night in spring, only weeks after their official engagement, Tony felt the change in Steve for the first time. They slept in Tony’s quarters then, and that night had been cold enough that they both pulled some layers on for warmth before getting under the covers. Tony wouldn’t remember what they talked about before drifting off, or who fell asleep first. All he remembered was the inexplicable alarm and spike of adrenaline that had woken him up in the dead of night, how tense Steve’s gentle arm had become. The soft touch of his fingers on Tony’s hip had grown firm and vicious in his sleep, his strong fingers seizing a fistful of Tony’s ass hard enough to bruise. 

He hadn’t handled it so well. Tony had shot up in bed, he had shouted at Steve - not in anger, but out of fear. Back then, he could never have imagined that his strong, happy, and safe Steve still suffered nightmares from his time in the war. Steve told him later that he’d been back in the trenches with his dad that night. Maybe his feet had been cold in his sleep and it had triggered the memory of his cold, wet feet in worn out combat boots, maybe the wailing winds reminded him of the men too young for war. 

Very quickly, Tony became more sensitive to Steve’s touch. Sometimes it was the faintest contraction in Steve’s bicep that would wake Tony from the deepest sleep, or even a twitch of Steve fingers. More often than not, Tony would lie awake for a short time to listen to Steve’s even breathing until he was sure Steve’s sleep was peaceful. He could have been dreaming of painting or swimming in a lake, and with the added comfort of knowing that Steve slept peacefully, Tony would close his eyes and drift away so easily. 

On that night after their visit to the Christmas market, Tony woke without realizing why. There was no knock at the door, no ringing phone. He lay still and concentrated, and soon enough, he felt it. A spasm in Steve’s hands, his fingers pressing into the meat of Tony’s ass. Even in the early stages of his dream, Tony could tell Steve wasn’t enjoying some salacious fantasy, or reliving their wedding night. There was no gentleness, no love; his fingers twitched with a nervous energy, and Tony could feel the tell-tale chills of Steve’s nightmares against his back. 

Tony had learned not to move no matter how badly he wanted to turn and face Steve. On nights he woke Steve from his nightmares, Tony had learned that Steve often slept badly, or still remembered the episode when he woke. So he practiced patience. He wouldn’t touch Steve’s grasping hand first, but he would gently caress his arm, smoothing a hand over Steve’s firm bicep and the corded muscles of his forearm. It took time, but the warmer he managed to make Steve feel, the more of that unwanted tension seeped away. When finally Steve’s bicep relaxed under Tony’s cheek, and his hand lay limp with sleep over Tony’s lower back, Tony reached back to cover Steve’s hand with his, lacing their fingers together. Without letting go, Tony slowly slid their joined hands under his pajamas and underwear to guide Steve to softly cup and squeeze his bare ass. Unconventional or not, the bare touch of Tony’s ass was so familiar and intimate that wherever Steve had been in his dreams, he still returned to cherished, loving memories. 

Steve’s nightmares had only been Tony’s first glimpse into PTSD. He had known of it in theory, of course, and respected the survivors who struggled with it every day, but he had never before seen how it consumed their peace and happiness. Steve had been safe and happy - there was no place safer than their palace, and the crowd at the Christmas market had been nothing but friendly and welcoming. Steve had been so pleased that he could carry on conversations with young Mächtingen, and he had enjoyed seconds and thirds of so much of the food. Maybe it was the cold that had stayed with him, or the obscured, dark faces of people in the night-time crowd, or the sheer number of people they saw. There was no way to know what had triggered him, and the thought of how many men and women of old Terrini still suffered from PTSD unseen weighed on Tony’s heart. He had learned what worked for his Steve, but the three million people who now recognized him as king needed their individual, attentive care. 

The fellowship for trauma counseling had been their first priority, but if he was honest, Tony suspected it was a more urgent concern for him than Steve. Howard had taught him to be a strong king, a respected and admired king. Sarah had showed him by example the importance of communication, of actively listening so that the source of a problem cannot be concealed. But Steve is the one who taught Tony patience and kindness. In the end, both Sarah and Howard had in their own ways tried to be effective, successful leaders. Steve was the one who had seen the devastation of war, who had seen first hand the unspeakable price of freedom. His priority was to protect his people, to care for them. He was not a king who desired leadership and respect, he was a king who foremost was a public servant, and the first line of defense for his people, whether they feared starvation or oppression. Tony had never imagined his power so humbled, yet Steve made it seem natural, so obvious, that with every passing day Tony started to wonder how it had never occurred to him before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The recipe described here for Steve's struffoli is modified from this "[Ricetta originale degli Struffoli Napoletani per Natale](https://cucina.fanpage.it/struffoli-napoletani-la-ricetta-per-un-dolce-di-natale-foto-guida/)" (Neapolitan Struffoli's original recipe for Christmas). Google translate is great, but really, you can also easily follow along with the photographs. Alternatively, [Giada de Laurentiis shows you how her family does it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym_wnyaXHPU). 
> 
> There are also three German words that may be helpful for this story: 
> 
> Mein = "my"  
> Schatz = "darling, sweetheart, treasure"  
> Schaf/Schafes = "sheep"


	4. Duty above all else

The announcement that enough food and supplies was available for the survivors did nothing to reduce the line of people waiting to offer their help. One young mother arrived with a large vegetarian stew full of various beans, legumes, potatoes, and figs for survivors who could not eat meat, wheat, or dairy. A teenager stood patiently in line for nearly an hour to donate his favorite childhood books; in a trembling but determined voice he told Steve that while he loved them, he didn’t need them the way some kids at the camp might. They were stories of young folk heroes, champions of kith and kin that children could identify with in times of hardship. 

Survivors, after all, were of all ages. 

Steve had only meant to briefly thank the volunteers, but instead he spent hours with them, thanking the local volunteers and helping to receive their donations while patiently answering the same questions over and over again. He didn’t know much, nobody did, but he could promise that their people’s security was their priority. 

When Bucky finally interrupted him, it was to address the pilots of the royal guard who had followed Tony in the initial response. Steve knew that Tony had dismissed them after Air Force reinforcements arrived, but the Iron Legion had clearly elected to disregard their king’s instruction. 

Steve glance down at the countdown on his watch. Thirteen hours had passed since the attack. Seven hours remained until Tony would willingly retire. 

Steve took a deep, steadying breath. In what world had that ever seemed reasonable? 

“Bring me Rhodes. Best friend or not, he is not to disobey the king,” he told Bucky quietly. He left Bucky to his task and turned back to thank the members of the mayor’s staff who were currently working to receive donations when the teenager who had donated his childhood books approached Steve again. 

“Your Highness,” he said quietly in Cimbri. Steve didn’t correct him, and instead waved a staying hand for Bucky and Rhodey who had returned to see him so that Steve could give his attention to the boy. 

Speaking in Cimbri was funny, in its own way. All other languages Steve had studied and practiced were learned with the finest tutors available to the crown. Native speakers and specialized linguists coached him on how accents and mannerisms conjured different social connections in each culture, and he spent days memorizing which to adopt and which to avoid. While Steve modeled most of his accents after Tony, whether in German, English, or Spanish, his tutors always impressed the importance of perfect elocution, mindful vocabulary, and polished accents no matter what language or message he shared. 

In every case, except for his native Cimbri. From his earliest public appearance beside his mother, Steve expressed no reservations about who he was or where he came from. Now, face to face with a young man who shook like a leaf to speak with him, Steve was only grateful that his accent reflected his working class upbringing. An average, unpolished farmer whom the boy could relate to more easily than any king. 

With a patient smile, he turned to the boy and asked, “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I talked to you earlier, Your Highness. With the books? My name is Taobe,” he replied, his words spilling from his lips in a rush of anxiety. “You probably don’t remember—it, it was—I mean, it’s not important to remember for a King, why should you? It was a long time—”

“Taobe,” Steve said in a slow, calm tone of voice, “I remember. You are here with your mother.” 

Even in the darkness of the late evening, Steve could see color rising in the boy’s cheeks from embarrassment. Taobe was a tall boy, but he couldn’t have been more than sixteen, so when all he could do was gape back at Steve in momentary shock, Steve took a knee so that Taobe would no longer have to look up at him. 

“With my moms, Your Highness,” Taobe whispered when Steve was closer to his height, keeping his voice low like he was imparting a secret that he couldn’t tell fast enough. “My dad—well, I don’t remember him, sir, but I never needed a dad because my ma’s done his job, too. But I was eight when you married King Anthony, Your Highness. I never knew… back then, I didn’t know that that happened, so I asked my ma and she, she was so happy she cried, and said she was like you, then, and a year after that, Mariana found us, and, and you didn’t know it,” he finished with uncomfortable, furtive looks at the tall men standing behind Steve, “but I don’t think ma and I would have Marimama without you. Sir. Your Highness, sir. And so I always told myself that if I ever met you that I had to thank you for… for making it something normal everyone knows about. For making my ma feel less alone.”

“Taobe, thank you for telling me. You have only made me happier,” Steve said with a smile that he could barely contain. If he had read Taobe’s story in a letter in the privacy of the palace, he would have cried openly. Cried and then saved it to share a cry with Tony again later. But here, in person, he had to be composed. He had to be a leader. 

“Did you say your moms were here?” Steve asked. “Could you introduce me? It would be a pleasure to speak with them, too,” he explained when Taobe only stared back at him. Then, all at once, the boy couldn’t agree fast enough, and he urged Steve to follow him. 

Steve got to his feet and promised Taobe he would be right behind him, but before he followed, Steve turned to where Bucky and Rhodey were waiting to see him. 

“Rhodes, you disobeyed a direct order from your king. I should not have to repeat my husband’s command,” Steve said in tight-lipped anger. “In seven hours, he and I will retire and I need the Iron Legion to be well rested.” 

“With all due respect, Steve,” Rhodey replied as diplomatically as he could while both irritated and exhausted. “I’m not sleeping while Tony is out here working.”

Steve’s icy glare spoke volumes of his irritation and his anger. “This is not a negotiation, Colonel,” he growled in a whisper. “This is a direct order from your king. There is no man I trust more to ensure my husband’s safety than you, no man he trusts more. We will depend on you to defend the kingdom while we rest. I will depend on you to keep my husband safe. So, I will repeat it for you: take your team. Take Bucky. Get out of my sight. _Rest_ ,” he insisted when Rhodey and Bucky exchanged mutinous looks. “I don’t want to see either of you again until morning.”

*** 

Steve’s first official appearance at an international event was the UN General Assembly in New York. He and Tony had celebrated their one year anniversary on the same day that their kingdom celebrated its first year as a united people. One month later he was sent on his first assignment. Everything changed so quickly, and how he had ever gotten up in front of representatives from all around the world still rattled him hours after he’d stepped away from the podium to humbling applause. 

After his presentation, Steve had been introduced to countless people whose faces and political histories he’d only before seen in textbooks. It was overwhelming, but not for the reasons he had anticipated. Language, it turned out, was the least of his worries. Everyone wanted to speak with him, everyone wanted to hear more about Consone’s proposal for affordable sustainable agriculture and advanced irrigation systems, and if one more person requested a face to face, Steve was going to lose his mind. 

“They’re going to eat me alive,” Steve confided to the holographic projection of his husband later that night. Midnight was well past Steve’s bedtime, especially after such a tiring day, but since their wedding they hadn’t gone to bed without talking about their respective days. Tony’s vibrant holoprojection was so detailed and clear that it was easy to imagine Tony was cocooned in blankets and smiling back at him from the other side of bed when in reality he was in their bed at home in the palace.

“They would not dare touch you, my love,” Tony murmured, his voice still deep from sleep. His curls swept around his hair in a whirlwind of bedhead, and as affectionate and playful as he was first thing in the morning, he meant every word that he said. “Coulson has Pepper’s highest recommendation. Not even I have that.”

“And you know exactly what you did,” Steve pointed out without sympathy. Tony giggled shamelessly at the reminder of what an asshole he could be to work with, mostly because everyone but Steve had no choice but to deal with him, and Steve held his breath to listen. He could have basked in the warmth of Tony’s laughter all day. 

“Did you see T’Challa?” Tony wondered, settling into his pillow and blankets to listen. “Was he helpful?”

“He introduced me to King Akeem and Ambassador Amayo. I lunch with them all tomorrow.”

Tony hummed to himself, satisfied. “Every report of the Assembly talks about you, you know. Everyone is realizing how handsome you are. I am not sure I like that you are now out there in the world without me…”

Steve choked on a laugh before he could contain himself. “Tony! After all the practice Bucky got babysitting me before our engagement, I’m pretty sure nobody’s getting past him. Myself included.”

“Bucky’s never been attracted to you, my love. He does not understand how powerful that motivation can be.”

Steve rolled onto his side and pulled the covers up over his shoulder. The holoprojection from his phone brought Tony close enough to touch, as if his sleepy face was nuzzling into the unoccupied pillow beside Steve’s. They hadn’t been apart in over a year, and already two nights on his own felt like a chore. What he wouldn’t give to be back in their shared bed already. 

“Mein Schafes,” Steve said in a softer voice, “how’ve you been sleeping? You look… thin.”

“Sweet talking me does not mean you get away with saying hurtful things,” Tony replied with a little pout that left Steve’s heart aching to reach for him. “It has been two days. I am not _thin_.”

“If I called Lila and asked her whether you’re regularly eating four meals a day, what would she tell me?”

“She would tell you that she is in Wakanda visiting Shuri and that the King’s lifestyle is above the judgement of any subject.” 

Tony could have said it with as much cheer or sarcasm as he liked, but Steve still understood what he meant. What he didn’t want to say. Tony wasn’t just alone, he was lonely. 

“Maybe you should ask her and Shuri to visit Consone? Don't you think it’s possible Shuri craves international cuisines, or the arts?” Steve suggested lightly, hoping not to sound so worried. “They don’t even have ravioli in Wakanda.” 

“Not every country has ravioli, my love,” Tony playfully soothed, if only because the familiar argument between them always left Steve smiling again. “Wakanda has many wonderful and diverse cuisines from all over Africa, I think we can forgive them this one disappointment.”

“Then, invite her to attend the theater? ‘Villains’ is still playing.”

“I am not lonely or unwell or _thin_ ,” Tony patiently told him, not that Steve believed it for a second. “Finish your meetings, and come home.”

“Mein Schafes, Coulson is already estimating that it will take longer than expected. We has scheduled two meetings at the capitol, and on our return to Consone, we will stop in Brussels,” he explained to his reluctant husband, “perhaps in Paris as well.” 

Tony visibly deflated, but he contained whatever groan of disappointment before Steve could hear it. “If Coulson feels it is necessary, it must be so. But I will speak to Pepper about amendments to your schedule on your first official engagement.”

“Don’t you dare, Tony,” Steve said immediately. His husband frowned then pouted in reply. “I’m scheduled to work seventy days this year, you work over three hundred days. I can stand to work more. Please don’t argue,” Steve finished more quietly, “It is important to me that I do this well.”

“I fear how easily you inspire me,” Tony muttered petulantly. “You make it seem effortless. And now the world knows my pain… you are impossible to resist. Finish your job, make Coulson happy. Then come back home, my love. Come back, and I will be a most grateful husband.” 

*** 

After that first night, Steve and Tony’s conversations grew shorter and increasingly sporadic. Televised interviews and panels discussing the future of accessible sustainable energy occupied every spare minute of Steve’s time outside of their political agenda, so despite his best efforts, he wasn’t able to catch more than a quick phone conversation with Tony until the following night. But instead of his sleepwarm husband, a staff member eventually informed Steve that his husband was unreachable in his workshop. 

Nights quickly became rotten without Tony. Steve couldn’t compare tossing and turning to his trauma from the war, but stewing in his fears of Tony neglecting his own health and overextending himself left Steve feeling more restless and exhausted with every passing day. Still, he wouldn’t consider the option of ending his assignment early to go home. Every added investor in Tony’s latest product lowered the cost of public services in Consone, so every time Coulson offered to new meetings or negotiations, Steve agreed. 

He traveled to D.C. to speak with senators from New England about a multi-state investment in the technology Steve presented at the General Assembly, then flew onward to Sacramento for a meeting with California’s Governor. No sooner had they touched down in California than Coulson got a call from South Korea. It nearly was the final straw. 

“What is this, Steve’s first world tour?” Bucky glowered after Coulson finished explaining the proposed changes in their schedule. “It’s been three weeks, Phil. That’s long enough.”

Steve caught Coulson and Bucky exchanging looks, but try as he might he couldn’t catch their meaning. He tried squinting at them for answers, but when he was ignored on both counts, he found himself too tired to care. Three weeks without a good night’s sleep made a man care less about the world. 

“Confirm that they would be willing to meet our minimum bid,” Steve mumbled sleepily without so much as looking at either of them. His head was too heavy so he rested with his forehead against the car window, and his tired eyes couldn’t endure the California sun without watering. His weary thoughts swarmed and echoed with roaring force inside his head leaving him with no energy to spare on any thought besides how badly, how desperately he wanted to rest. All he wanted was one night, one rotten, godforsaken night of peace. 

“Steve?” 

To open his eyes felt like a herculean task. He couldn’t bring himself to try. 

“Steve, it’s for you. It’s Jim.”

 _Jim._ James Rhodes, Tony’s best friend and - most importantly - the man responsible for Tony’s security. Had Steve’s worst nightmares come true? Had Tony worked himself sick? Had another demented soul made an attempt on Tony’s life in Steve’s absence? The icy chill of terror clawed down Steve’s back without mercy, and in his sudden panic, Steve sat up and groped with wild, uncoordinated hands for the phone. 

“Tony, how is Tony?” he choked into the phone, breathless. “Rhodes?”

“Tony is safe,” Jim promised. He didn’t only sound calm, he gentled his tone as if he had anticipated Steve’s distress. “The palace is secure, Steve. I’m calling to tell you Tony is resting. I assigned Natasha to him until you return.”

Relief revived Steve with an intoxicating power that neither oxygen or fire possessed. In that one glimmering second he felt _hope._

“Jim, you’ll never know how badly I needed to hear those words,” Steve whispered unevenly as his exhaustion as his relief mounted into a new state of delirium. “I am deeply grateful.”

“Thank Natasha. You were right about her, she noticed your sorry state first,” Jim told him with an audible grin. “I only gave her permission to do something about it. But listen,” he added in a more somber tone, “the rest is up to you. I’ll make sure he eats and rests, but if I know Tony, this will mostly be on you. Show him that taking care of himself helps you, and he will think twice about being an idiot again.”

The surety in Jim’s voice comforted Steve even when he couldn’t understand what he was being asked to do. Somehow he felt like he’d know soon enough. 

“I’ll do my best, Jim. You have my word.”

After his short conversation with Jim, Steve checked his phone and found a new video message waiting from Natasha. As impatient as he was to learn every scrap of information he could about Tony, the knowledge that his husband was safe and resting gave Steve enough willpower to wait to watch the video in private. Phil and Bucky and the rest of the staff already knew so much about him and Tony, and selfishly, Steve coveted every opportunity for a modicum of privacy. 

They arrived at the Citizen Hotel where Steve’s staff had already prepared the penthouse for his stay. Bucky and Coulson took nearby suites on the same floor and left the exhausted king alone for the night. Steve kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket over an armchair as he rushed into the lounge and dropped into the nearest sofa. 

Alone at last, he played the video. 

The ten minute video began with a familiar scene in Tony’s workshop: Tony slumped over a workstation, his face obscured by a welding helmet while he grasped a torch in one hand and a slim piece of metal in the other. Fortunately his grip through the gloves had gone slack enough that the torch had gone out without causing more than superficial damage to the table. 

Rhodes walked up to Tony’s sleeping form to wake him with a gentle touch. “Tony?” he said in a lowered voice, “hey, Tony, wake up.”

As slow and calm as Rhodes tried to be, his touch clearly startled Tony. He jolted in his chair, his hands grasping into defensive fists around the trigger. Rhodes moved quickly to control Tony’s right hand before he accidentally burned himself. It only took him a few seconds to free the torch from Tony’s grasp, but Steve’s heart dropped like a stone. The image of that torch flame centimeters from Tony’s bare neck haunted him, and it wasn’t until Rhodes was hauling Tony off the chair and over his shoulders that Steve checked back in with the video. 

He watched as Tony wriggled free of Rhodes’ grip and stumbled back to the workshop _‘to finish one last thing real quick!’_ \- he watched Rhodes chase Tony around the workstation like some tired imitation of Benny Hill. It didn’t matter how many times Tony accused his best friend of treason of the highest order: Rhodes caught him eventually and shepherded Tony all the way back to the royal apartments. He deposited Tony on a bench in the sitting room where his grimy clothes wouldn’t ruin the furniture, and Steve watched as a hand from behind the camera - Natasha’s - dropped a folder into Tony’s lap. 

The folder contained ten days worth of photographs of Steve. He knew, because the pictures were dated - ranging from his first public appearance at the General Assembly, to his televised debate with climate change deniers earlier that day. 

Steve had noticed the smallest signs of fatigue on Tony’s face, but somehow he’d forgotten to give himself a second look. Had he really become so pale? 

He watched Tony stare at the photos of Steve’s progressively worsening health. He listened to Jim and Natasha explain what Tony could so clearly see evidenced in the photographs, sharing a report from Bucky outlining Steve’s declining health. He watched Tony’s shoulders hunch inward and his eyes water. 

The guilt of bringing Tony to tears threatened to choke him, and Steve scrubbed a hand over his cheeks to wipe his own tears away. It hurt to watch, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Why had they filmed this? Why had they thought it would help? He missed Tony terribly, but it hurt now to see how loosely his clothes fit and how his strong fingers trembled. 

“It’s not just you anymore, Tony,” Steve heard Jim say. “I get it: the more you get done before he gets back, the more time you can take off. But Steve doesn’t need you to work as much as possible, Tony. He needs your support. Until you can do that yourself, I’m assigning Natasha to stay with you so he will see you’re eating and sleeping again. But if you give her trouble, so help me god, Tony—”

“I will not. I will be no trouble, I promise,” Tony whispered uncomfortably, glancing at Jim, Natasha, and finally the camera before he caved and stared down at his own hands. They looked dry and bruised, and Steve ached to hold them in his again. 

“Good. Then let’s get you to bed, Tony. That’s enough, Romanov,” Jim told Natasha before the video ended. 

Steve sat motionless on the sofa for some time thinking about what he should do. His first instinct was to call Tony and leave him a video message thanking him for listening to Jim and Natasha, but if Tony saw him now… Steve couldn’t do that to him. In the end, Steve decided to take a quick shower, take the sleeping pills Coulson kept offering him, and left instructions not to be disturbed for ten hours. 

After weeks of nightmares fueled with anxiety over how his husband fared at home, sleep finally came to Steve peacefully. 

*** 

Steve woke up more than ten hours later. There was no alarm ringing, no staff member in sight. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was well rested and alone. 

He rolled over and grabbed his phone to give Tony a call, only to realize he’d woken up so late that Tony would already be at work. And, to his surprise, there was a new video waiting for him. This one was from Tony, and judging by the angle of the initial image, Tony had taken it himself at their private dining room. 

“My love, I believe we must fire all of our attending staff,” Tony began with a begrudging smirk. “There is an alarming rash of insubordination spreading among them. Coulson left clear instructions forbidding me from calling you this morning. Forbade _me!_ His king! If this was my grandfather’s time, they would all be in the dungeon for their blatant disrespect. Were it not an act of treason, Rhodey would have fed me breakfast by force this morning, I am sure of it. As it happens, he was called away before breakfast, so to spite him I requested his favorite order.” 

Tony angled the camera away from himself to show Steve a long platter stuffed with enough crepes to feed a family - half of them filled with a gooey cheese and cured meats, and the other half folded over a variety of fruits and chocolates, creams, or custard. Steve didn’t know whether to laugh or roll his eyes, but he was too relieved by it all. Tony was smiling, he had rested, and he was _eating_ \- at a table, too, instead of scarfing something down to absorb the coffee on his way somewhere. 

And best of all, from the glimpse Tony shared of the breakfast feast, Steve spied a large jug of chocolate milk and two added table settings arranged across the table. 

A weight Steve had lived with for too long lifted from his chest as the pieces all fell into place. 

“Do not fear: I will not breakfast alone. I took your advice and called Lila,” Steve heard Tony explain in the video, confirming Steve’s own guess. “She and Shuri are here now and they have graciously allowed me to join them today on a visit to the Queen’s Troupe and the visiting exhibition of Victor Hugo’s artworks. Incidentally, Shuri let it slip that her brother’s birthday approaches. How do you think he would like a Super Soaker? From us both, of course.”

A burst of loud, cheerful voices flooded the audio and Steve watched as Tony’s gaze lifted to something beyond the phone and warmed with a smile. Moments later, Lila made her way around to embrace her Uncle Tony in a tight squeeze. When Tony explained whom the recording was for, Shuri popped into view, and together the girls waved and wished Steve a good morning before informing him that they were taking Tony’s phone away so they could eat. 

“Ci manchi, Polpetto! This is Maribel’s final month with the Troupe,” Lila said in a whisper, her eyes shamelessly bright with excitement. Jim Rhodes’ crush on the visiting American thespian was the biggest open secret in the palace, and after months of conspiring and forced theater going, he - a decorated pilot and life-long confidant of the king - had worked up the nerve to speak to the young woman in passing. 

Months, and he hadn’t even managed to ask her out for coffee. 

“And if Uncle Tony isn’t with us, Uncle Rhodey won’t come,” she concluded without so much as a peep about their (her) plans. “We love you! Be safe!”

Shuri wished him luck for the day, and Tony reminded him that he loved him dearly before Lila blew him a kiss and turned off the recording. 

For the first time in a long time, Steve got out of bed with a smile on his face. He washed his face, spent a few minutes recording a reply to his family, then texted Coulson to let him know he was getting ready for the day. 

Soon a team of people with his clothes and his outlined conversation topics filled his suite, and confident in Tony’s health and happiness, it was so easy to focus on the task at hand so he could make it one step closer to being back home. 

*** 

They were in the air on their way to Seoul when Steve received Tony’s reply. Tony had recorded a short video in the dim light of the full moon on a stroll through the palace grounds. Steve could see the stars in the clear sky all around his husband; their beauty couldn't compete with Tony for his attention, but it was a pleasant thought to imagine Tony enjoying the fresh air on such a pleasant night. As expected, Jim had gotten no further than praising Maribel for her dazzling creativity and captivating performance. Tony confided in Steve that Lila seemed unexpectedly blue in Steve’s absence at the art exhibit, and that she’d insisted on pasta for lunch. Steve burst out laughing when Tony admitted they both ordered Steve’s favorite meal, mushroom ricotta ravioli. As the palace lights came back into view, Tony wished him a good night, peaceful rest, and reminded Steve how much he was looking forward to hearing from him soon. 

“Phil takes the best photographs of you, my love,” Tony mentioned with laughter bright in his eyes, a tangential thought that interrupted his loving farewell. “Did he say he shared a picture of you before your meeting today? You know how I love the picture he took of us at the wedding. You had never looked so handsome, and still they had not adorned you with all your medals and honors. But I look at you now and I still cannot believe my luck. Around the world people exalt a bold new leader. At home, people grow increasingly proud and grateful of you. To think you feared your hard work would not pay off,” he teased in the end, pleased and smug all at once, like he always was when Steve feared he’d never learn, or that he would embarrass Tony and their people somehow. 

“Sleep well, my king. I love you.”

  
_I could cry if I look at this too long (commissioned art from[mirthandstar](https://mirthandstar.tumblr.com)) _

__

__

*** 

The light at the end of the tunnel was slowly making itself known. After Korea, there was only a brief conference in Geneva to meet with Macron, Michel, and Bettel between them and a return to Consone. 

On the morning of his first full day in Seoul, Steve woke up to a video from Jim where Tony and Lila were showing the PM’s children the stable of royal horses where they all visit Damask, the little black foal descended from Hypatia’s sire. Damask would one day be Steve’s horse, but for now, it was an excitable, curious bundle of nerves and curiosity that - to the children’s delight - would do almost anything for treats. 

Since Steve’s first appointment was in the afternoon, he made a video of his morning for Tony. He watched the sunrise rise over the Seoul skyline from the comfort of a jacuzzi big enough to stretch his legs in. The breakfast feast was unlike anything Steve had seen. In his childhood, cheese, eggs, and nuts had been his typical breakfast, and he had come to love the addition of cold cuts, bread, and vegetables from Machtberg’s customs. Rice and short ribs were so unexpected that he couldn’t help but tell Tony about it, and he tried everything - the seafood salad, the spicy stewed fish, the cold cucumber soup - and told Tony how it was. 

He couldn’t wait to be home, but in that moment, it felt exciting to share a new experience with Tony as it happened. Except, of course, Tony was surely sound asleep in Consone, and so Steve wished him a good morning, and sent the video to start his day. 

The time difference from Korea was not as great as when Steve had been in San Francisco, but still Steve felt caught off guard when his phone peeped with an incoming message in the middle of a meeting. Nobody else had noticed, but it was through sheer force of will that Steve continued the meeting with a fairly level head. Throughout the day he was helplessly aware of his phone weighing in his pocket, until finally he could slip away at the end of the day and indulge in these newly (and fiercely) coveted messages from his husband. 

The video began with Tony and Jim in a marketplace unlike anything Eisenturm, and Steve recognized Fiorera’s Saturday market in a heartbeat. The voices in the background and the jaunty, uplifting music of the fisarmonica brought him right back to happy memories walking through the market with his mother. Unlike the markets in Machtberg where most people arrived with purpose and attentively perused groceries and wares, old marketplaces of Terrini were a site for socializing with friends near and far. 

Jim must have been holding Tony’s phone, because most of it was of Tony - talking to Rhodey or talking to Steve between intermittent conversations with strangers in the marketplace. 

If Tony only knew the consuming excitement he stoked in Steve every time he spoke Cimbri. Steve made it about a third of the way into the video before he had to stop. He had been away from Tony for too long, and the temptation to take matters into his own hands nearly overwhelmed him now. 

But it was one thing to tempt himself with the memory of Tony’s keening moans and gasping demands, of his strong thighs and his sinful lips. It was another thing entirely to do so with a video featuring Tony’s best friend and half a dozen helpful grandmas. Steve left the remainder of the video unwatched and husseled himself into a cold shower before bed. 

One last night in Seoul, and three days in Geneva. So close, but somehow not close enough. 

*** 

At four in the morning, Steve woke to the sound of an incoming message on his phone. Neither he nor Tony had any business being up at that time, and adrenaline coursed through Steve’s veins like ice. He jolted upright and grabbed for his phone with another hand automatically on the hotel phone to call Bucky in. 

The video was taken in the dark, and fear pounded in Steve’s chest on high alert. It was too dark to make out anything but vague shapes, though Steve could make out some movement now and then in the silence. 

“ _Steve…_ ”

Heat coiled deep in Steve’s gut when he first heard Tony’s broken, breathless cry. He fell back into bed and stared unblinking at the dark screen. Slowly his eyes adjusted enough to make out the outline of Tony’s body on his knees in bed, his face pressed into the mattress while he rutted into his own fist for release. 

Tony was already out of breath and begging for him. “I miss you, my love,” he whispered hoarsely, looking through the camera into Steve’s eyes. Steve’s breath caught in his throat, and mindlessly he reached down to press the heel of his palm over his aching cock before he lost his mind. 

“I tried to resist touching myself until your return. Until it was you… your body, your strong hands,” Tony confessed with a guttural grunt of pleasure, and instinctively Steve salivated with the knowledge that Tony must have given his cock a firm squeeze. “I dreamed… my love, I dreamed of our honeymoon. On the ocean, with no audience but the stars…” 

For their honeymoon they had to the sea on a private yacht for a few days, far from staff, curious tourists, and hidden cameras. That first night, Steve had ridden Tony’s cock under the light of a starlit sky. The memory of Steve struggling to make it last and unraveling Tony's world with every roll of his hips, every touch of his lips. 

“Steve, I need you,” Tony panted in fragile whisper, a sound too desperate to succumb to his pride. A crown prince turned king, Tony wanted for nothing in his life. Nothing could be so humiliating and alien to him as to beg. 

With a wretched sob, Tony suddenly stretched out flat on the mattress, breathless, irritated, and unsatisfied. “Please, my love,” he pleaded. “The world has had you long enough. For me, Steve, please. Come home.”

The video ended, and with it, Steve’s stubborn duty to their people. His duty to his people took precedence over most aspects of his life, and in his excitement to do the best job he could, he had done tenfold more than ever asked of him. But all of it had been at the expense of his duty to his husband and to his king. 

One call to Coulson was all it took for the arrangements to be made, and for Steve to make peace with this newfound limitation of what it meant to do his best. As a farmer, as a soldier, and as a prince, his life had only ever been about doing more: to be more vigilant shepherd, to stay awake longer so his men could sleep in the field, to study for hours on one subject after another. But as he had heard Rhodes tell Tony weeks ago, this was not only his life anymore, he shared it with another person. A person whom he loved deeply and wanted to honor. It had all gotten away from him so quickly, and on that final flight back to his husband, Steve swore to himself that he'd never allow his duty to so easily lead him from the vows he made to Tony again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italian translations:  
> Ci manchi = "we miss you"  
> Polpetto = "Meatball" (affectionately)


	5. Solstice festival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : Mention of miscarriages, and minor character death.

It wasn’t long before Tony came to the bedside of an older woman who had no-one watching over her. The little sign at the foot of her bed clearly indicated her name, that she was allergic to shellfish, and that her language of preference was _Höchstalemannisch_ , the dialect of High German spoken in old Machtberg. Lumine was part of old Terrini where people spoke Cimbri, an ancient Italian relative of High German that now was nearly extinct. Though they were not close enough to be intelligible, Tony had been raised to speak both fluently, so he almost took the language symbol on patient charts for granted. Everyone he met in Lumine spoke Cimbri; this woman was an exception. 

“Agneta, I bring you supper. May I enter?” Tony said to announce himself, holding the platter of food and water in front of him. 

Agneta must have been lost in her own thoughts, because it took her some time to realize someone had spoken to her. It took her longer still to recognize him. She looked old enough to have grown up with Howard as her first king, which meant she would have seen photos of Tony since he was born. she rallied to attention, sitting up straight while trying to bow her head out of respect. 

“Your Majesty! Forgive me,” she said in a rush, scrambling to get out of bed. Whatever her plan was, Tony feared she was trying to stand to bow, so he placed the food on a small table provided for her and hurried to help her get back into bed. 

“No formalities necessary in a hospital, madame,” Tony said as calmly as he could despite his skyrocketing heartbeat. He wanted to so badly to help, but privately he had feared that he’d do more harm than good by overwhelming patients. Thankfully, however, his guess had been right, and Agneta’s sudden anxieties over propriety were soothed. 

She watched him cautiously and kept her hands in her lap. She wouldn’t stop staring. “Your Majesty, are you well? We all saw… we saw what happened,” she lowered her voice to say, clearly trying to be gentle about something so awful. 

“I am unharmed, I assure you,” Tony said with a practiced pleasant smile. “I am here to bring you supper, and to see if you would like some company.”

Agneta stared at him in open shock. “ _Your_ company, your Majesty?”

She didn’t seem relaxed enough in his company to lie down, so Tony found another pillow to support her back so she could sit up more comfortably. Then he sat down in a plastic chair provided for visitors, a very clear sign that he had no intention of leaving soon. 

“If you will have it, madame,” he said with a smile, briefly getting up to help Agneta reach her glass of water when she stretched for it. In an effort to help her get comfortable, Tony started the conversation. “I notice your preferred language is not Cimbri. How long have you lived here?”

“Two years now, your Majesty,” she said, still looking a little worried with her answers. “My late husband was a devoted educator in Friedstadt. That was our home.” 

Friedstadt was the highest city in old Machtberg, built on a mountain peak made hospitable by a natural spring. Despite the altitude, it had been one of the earliest cities that attracted large numbers of immigrating families from old Terrini. Many of the early families were goat farmers who brought their livestock with them, and the goats, with their sure footing and stubborn attitudes, thrived in the lush, mountainous landscape around Friedstadt. Like many cities in Machtberg, Friedstadt historically struggled to develop a local agriculture - people were highly educated and unaccustomed to farming, particularly in such mountainous terrain. The families from old Terrini brought with them generations of practical wisdom, and soon after their arrival Friedstadt had local access to nutritious crops and fresh eggs, dairy, and meat. 

It was one of the earliest success stories of the unification, and Tony listened to Agneta talk about how she had seen the city’s spirits and sense of community lifting through her children. To theoretically understand the importance of nature and recycling is one thing, but to see first hand the magic of seasons, of little seeds that grow into strong, nutritious wheat, or kid goats who so freely play on sheets of ice, those were few of the many lessons Friedstadt had never known before unification. 

“Otto never wished to retire; his students kept him young for many years. Many of his students from old Terrini were very bright, and he often told me of their innovative solutions to problems children in Machtberg took for granted. He cared deeply for the Queen’s Exchange, and after his passing, I thought I might try it. My children are grown, and here I can do some good that would make Otto proud. I teach older students,” she explained with a smile, “they were too old for public schooling, but could do with foundational skills.”

“Our initiatives are of no worth without people such as yourself, madame,” Tony said after a brief silence. Just because he and Steve felt something was important never meant that others would see the intention behind their decisions. His heart ached with wonder and gratitude to hear Agneta talk so warmly of her experience. 

After all, a kingdom could flourish without a king, but not so without compassion. After a lifetime of work and raising her own children, Agneta had left her childhood home and learned a new language for the benefit of children far away. 

“You leave me speechless, Agneta. In fact, I fear you leave me no choice. Would you do me and his Majesty, my husband, the honor of joining us at the palace in Eisenturm next June in celebration of the solstice? Every year we celebrate those who allow Consone to thrive, and I cannot imagine such a celebration this year without your attendance.”

*** 

The unification brought many changes to Consone. Some could be observed or monitored immediately, such as literacy or unemployment rates. Others, especially those founded in cultural differences, were less straightforward. As historically neighboring countries, Terrini and Machtberg observed many of the same holidays - they simply did it differently. Practical changes - such as providing for new students in the schools, having enough medical care to serve changing city populations, or warding against sudden unemployment - were easier to negotiate in parliament than how people might respond to social changes. There was less they could do to plan for how the agnostic Mächtingen might react when religious Terrini newcomers asked for a nativity scene in the city for Christmas, or how the conservative Terrini would welcome young, liberal Mächtingen who drank socially on weekdays and comfortably talked about sex and sexuality. 

Steve and Tony had decided early on not implement direct changes to the cultural traditions of their united people. The freedom to practice any custom or religion that did not actively vilify or harm others was protected, but the rest was left to individuals and local government. There was only one exception. 

The summer solstice was barely a blip on the radar in old Machtberg. A pagan tradition had no business in an advanced, post-industrial country, and at most it was considered an excuse for families and friends to end their work day by going out to barbecue, taking their boats out on the water, and letting their kids stay up late enough to watch dazzling fireworks light up the night sky. 

For the people of old Terrini, the summer solstice was a holiday second only to Christmas. Unlike Mächtingen who routinely treated it as a typical working day, Terrini did not work in observance of the summer solstice. It was a day of rest, of coming together, and a day where no one in the community would be hungry or alone. The summer solstice was a celebration of the wealth of a people, and the thought of involving money with their traditions would have been insulting. Farmers shared their bounty by feeding people - suckling pigs and roasting hens, bread and cheese. Carpenters and artists worked for months to create the stages and prizes for the games, while others added to the atmosphere on the day by painting faces and performing joyful music where couples young and old could find the chance to dance. 

Regardless of where in old Terrini one was, every summer solstice began with games for the children, perhaps a strategic choice by their ancestors who recognized the relative peace families would enjoy into the afternoon with tired, well-fed children. Children competed in obstacle courses and in animal husbandry to win raffles to various afternoon entertainment, such as canoeing or pony rides. Not to be outdone, the adults spent much of their days in similar attempts to one-up each other for bragging rights. Everything from caber tossing to three-legged races to eating competitions were widely popular, and it seemed no-one was immune to the lure of victory. 

In their effort to leave these cultural differences alone, Steve and Tony had initially grouped the summer solstice with Easter and Christmas. It wasn’t until plans for their wedding came into the fore that they took a second look. Their wedding day would not only be the anniversary of their union, but that of their country. Briefly, they considered modeling the Dutch tradition of King’s day, a nationwide celebration of their king and country, but it was quickly dismissed as a self-aggrandizing effort that did not fit with their intended direction for the kingdom. They were not alone in their effort to lift Consone and its people; to celebrate the unification and their achievements without recognizing the people and local leaders who made it possible felt insulting and wrong. 

In the final days of drafting their proposal for the unification, Steve and Tony reconsidered the summer solstice with nothing more than determination and budding dreams. The celebrations were dramatically dissimilar, but theoretically compatible: it was possible to celebrate with games and food all day and lead into a night of fireworks and more food. If their wedding followed the summer solstice, it would give their people two consecutive national holidays - one to celebrate with their families and neighbors, and another to enjoy as a nation. 

But who was to say the kings deserved recognition more than the scientists and engineers who worked with Tony to advance and fund much of their kingdom’s education and medical care? These scientists were the backbone of the kingdom, as were educators and government administrators, those who offered local leadership and nurtured the future of their people. And what of the children themselves, whose own achievements and confidence were equally vital to the kingdom’s continued prosperity? 

In the end, Steve and Tony proposed a wedding plan that began with a combined celebration of the summer solstice, spent five days recognizing the people whose work and efforts were indispensible to the kingdom, and concluded on the seventh day with their wedding. They wrote it with the expectation that their proposal would not be accepted in full. They wrote it with the understanding that it would never be so elaborate or as welcome in subsequent years. 

As it turned out, they were wrong on both counts. 

*** 

Ever since their wedding, the day before the summer solstice had become one of the most difficult days to work. Focusing on anything approaching productivity was nearly impossible, mostly because all Tony was good for was counting down the minutes until the transformation of his fully grown, brave war veteran of a husband into a playful, competitive force of nature. 

The first year Steve’s interest in the festival had taken Tony completely by surprise. There was nothing Steve didn’t want to try; from the caber toss and hammer throw, to single handedly taking on an entire class of elementary students in tug o’ war, he participated in everything. When he went as far as to volunteer them for the three-legged race, Tony openly balked. Walking in a crowd of thousands with bare minimum security was already shocking, but to let someone tie his leg to his fiance’s to run-hop-squirm against each other in public? 

Of course, the moment Steve turned to Coulson and asked if he wanted to take Tony’s place Tony changed his mind. Nobody was going to squirm against his future husband’s body but _him_ , consequences be damned. 

When the whistle blew, they made it almost five steps before their uncoordinated effort led to tangled limbs and an immediate collapse. Steve had gotten his arms around him and rolled to take the fall; at the time Tony had been mortified, but in hindsight his memory of their first three-legged race was filled with Steve’s heartfelt laughter and the safety of Steve’s strong arms. In subsequent years, Tony grew increasingly receptive to practicing in advance, but since it turned out that Steve intentionally sabotaged them every year, they never really won. Or, well… he _probably_ sabotaged them every year; Tony never asked to confirm, but it didn’t matter. Now he looked forward to his annual tumble into his husband’s embrace. 

Only twenty hours separated Tony from his long-awaited race. Twenty hours before he pretended he could watch Steve hurtle (frankly alarming) weights in the hammer throw without getting hot under the collar. Twenty hours before Steve excitedly gorged himself on half a dozen pies alongside a handful of their nuttiest citizens. The first year Steve volunteered for the pie eating contest, Tony had wanted to cry. A monarch gorging himself _in public?_ In the age of social media and in front of functional cameras? But it seemed to be the only event Steve really wanted to win, and after the fifth pie, Tony had found himself hypnotized with a morbid fascination. 

Despite his best efforts, Steve only won the pie eating contest once in the past three years. Somehow, with all the other events and events they engaged in that day, he avoided being sick or crashing after inhaling eight whole fig and pear pies. It hadn’t been until much later that night in the privacy of Tony’s old bedroom that he’d let Tony hold him and rub his cranky stomach for hours until he could sleep. 

“Where are you?” a familiar voice whispered. 

Tony startled and looked up from the page he hadn’t been reading. While he was lost in his thoughts, Steve had come into his office and perched on his desk. He wore a blue terry cloth robe and, as far as Tony could tell, little else. Tony put his papers aside and smiled back at his impish husband. 

“I intended to review my pages,” Tony explained, “but memories stole me away to what is arguably your greatest achievement.”

Tony didn’t have to say more for Steve’s gaze to stray in search of his blue ribbon. He always smiled at the sight of it, displayed proudly on the wall behind Tony’s desk between framed original artwork from masters of the baroque period. 

“You’ve moved it,” Steve observed with a curious look of amusement. 

“I feel optimistic about your appetites this year,” Tony casually replied. “The Rubens seemed to me lonely without a second ribbon.”

“For you and for the Rubens, I will give it my best effort,” Steve promised with a warm laugh. “I thought I’d take a dip and keep you company, unless you want privacy…?”

He let the question trail off, as if it was a decision Tony really needed time to make. As if a speech Tony intended to fully ignore deserved his attention when it could be given to his husband. But in two days he would be addressing engineers and analysts from the finest labs in the country, and for that Tony still had plenty of literature to review. 

Tony took Steve’s hand in his and brought it to his lips. “My love, what fool am I to deny myself your company?” 

After three years of marriage, Steve’s face and chest still flushed at unexpected flattery. It was easily one of Tony’s favorite pastimes. 

“Join me when you can, mein Schafes,” Steve told him with meaning, and with those words he stepped away from the desk and left Tony to do his work. 

Not that Tony could resist watching him walk away and disrobe, shameless in his confidence. To Tony’s surprise and mild regret, Steve wore a pair of swim trunks under his robe, probably in the event that Tony needed privacy to work. Steve made his way to the shallow, serpentine hot tub designed to look like a gentle brook which separated Tony’s office from his more leisurely reading nook. 

Loose-limbed and naked but for his swim trunks, Steve should have been the worst distraction imaginable. But as much as Tony wished he could join his husband in the hot water and powerful jets, Steve’s presence was also a comfort to Tony’s impatient excitement. He could work and at any minute glance up assure himself that Steve relaxed peacefully, assure himself that Steve was contended and smiling. 

After all, in approximately twenty hours, Steve would be hard at work eating pies and sabotaging yet another attempt to win the three-legged race. He deserved his rest. 

***

For the first joint solstice festival celebrated in Consone, Tony chose a dove grey suit to recognize the informal nature of the day. He had not been prepared to discover his husband-to-be in traditional black lederhosen, an embroidered black vest, and a white shirt with full bishop sleeves. 

Thankfully the vest had been lost quickly that day (or sent back to the palace while Steve wasn’t looking). By the next year, Tony conceded to Steve’s one day of traditional wear and left his suit at home. He didn’t go as far as the traditional German suspenders, but stuck to a silk vest with red and gold embroidery that matched the detailing of his lederhosen. Grudgingly, he later admitted that the leather had been more comfortable than his suits, and Steve gleefully kissed him silly for his promise to do it again in years to come. 

For Consone’s fifth solstice festival and ahead of their fourth anniversary, Tony opened the day with a short expression of gratitude for the diverse advancements and victories both big and small across the kingdom in the past year. His address was their only official obligation of the day, and soon afterward they were both released to enjoy the food, festivities, and games along with everyone else at Eisenturm. 

In his first event, Steve took on a whole class of twenty first-graders in tug o’ war. He hauled on his end of the rope with all his might, slowly but surely dragging their scrambling little feet and shrieking objections closer and closer to the victory line. Before it was too late, however, the children’s teacher snuck into the mix to give her students a hand. With her added strength the first-graders regained some ground, until Steve made a big show of being overpowered and defeated. Laughing and overjoyed, the children rallied around their teacher and families in their great excitement to have triumphed over the king himself, while Steve happily slunk back to Tony’s open arms. 

“Never have I met a man so happy to lose,” Tony teased as his ‘defeated’ husband indulged in his extensive consolation. 

Steve turned in Tony’s arms so they could both watch the school children hoisting their trophy in the air with great delight. “This is a greater reward,” Steve said quietly. “Look at them. They will not soon forget this day.”

“And they accuse me of being romantic,” Tony muttered in feigned irritation, and he felt Steve’s silent laughter against his chest and in the strong arms holding him. 

Steve made it far in the hammer throw competition, and then to Tony’s endless relief, he was quickly eliminated in the caber toss. They spent the next hour or two wandering through the crowds, and Steve comforted himself with roast lamb and a platter of grilled peaches and figs with ice cream for all his effort and losses. They paused here to watch young children competing in agility courses with their bunnies, and there to see the older kids doing the same with their dogs. 

“Tony, they’re starting an archery contest,” Steve said while Tony tried to covertly spear some of the grilled figs off his plate. “What do you think?”

They walked in the direction of the starting game, and as cautious as Tony tried to be in public, he couldn’t deny it was an exciting thought. 

“I am not as generous as you, my love,” Tony hedged before daring to accept Steve’s suggestion. “Would you forgive me if I won?”

Steve glanced around at the people lining up to volunteer for the game. “I don’t see any children,” he observed, then turned to Tony with a confident smile. “Give them no mercy, mein Schafes. For me and for the Rubens.”

With Steve’s endorsement, Tony joined the dozen other archers lined up for the contest. Onlookers cheered with excitement and applauded to see their king participating in his first event, until Bucky took his place beside Tony in the competition and a silence fell over the crowd. Tony’s stared slack jawed in genuine surprise, and around them their audience suddenly roared with laughter and applause to see the king’s own bodyguard coming in as a challenger. 

Tony huffed and tried not to splutter in his shock. Looking at Steve was no help or comfort either; the damn rat was laughing so hard it looked like he’d fall over any moment. 

Bucky flashed Tony a smug, self-satisfied smirk. “Can’t make it too easy for you, your Majesty.”

“This is _treason—_ ” Tony started to say, but thankfully someone came up to offer him a bow and quiver before he gathered too much steam. He shot Barnes a withering side-eye before remembering that he was in public, and quickly did his best to restrain his flare of competitive indignation. 

As if by magic, Steve and Natasha had acquired a giant pretzel each, and like the curious imps they could be, they were watching the competition begin as if it was the most exciting game in history. 

Out of respect for their monarch, Tony was invited to go first. He hit the bullseye on his first attempt, then somehow buried his second arrow right beside the first. Even with the jubilant applause of the excited audience, Tony could still make out Steve’s sharp whistling and deep laughter. One glimpse at his husband, and it was so clear Steve was ready to burst with pride. Tony had scored a perfect twenty and made it look effortless, except… Bucky was no less adept in his marksmanship. 

Round after round they advanced well ahead of their competition, until it was only the two of them and a third man left in the game. By then the targets had been moved so far back the colors were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Tony managed to hit the bullseye with his first shot, but the second arrow strayed and cost him a point. Bucky tied him, but couldn’t score a perfect twenty either. 

When the third man stepped up for his turn, the audience around them was dead silent. He notched his arrow, took a steadying breath, and nailed it. Perfect bullseye. He had enough decency to glance at Tony for a moment before plucking the next arrow out of his quiver, and Steve must have rubbed off on him more than Tony had realized, because in the moment he found it easy to give the stranger a nod of encouragement to continue. 

Another perfect bullseye. 

There was a moment of stunned silence, but Tony was quick to applaud and cheer for the winner, and the audience happily followed his lead. 

While the crowd watched as the archery winner got his award, Tony glanced at Steve with a meaningful look. Steve in turn looked at Natasha. 

“We want to know who he is,” he told her quietly. “Be discrete.”

By the time Tony and Bucky made their way back to Steve, Natasha was nowhere to be seen. 

“Did you intentionally miss your second shot?” Tony was asking as they regrouped, and as one of the few people comfortable enough to do so, Bucky blatantly rolled his eyes at him. 

“You wish. It would have been a pleasure to win that game,” Bucky promised, though ironically, his answer only seemed to satisfy Tony. 

“I can smell the pies,” Steve interrupted them both to say. “Or I am getting really hungry; either way, I want to eat pie.”

Tony pressed his lips together in a clear effort not to laugh, and as Bucky started through the crowd to lead the way, Tony wrapped an arm around Steve’s waist and pressed in close to his side. Steve lifted his arm to hug Tony close and bring him in closer. 

“He must have a great respect for you to be so bold,” Steve whispered in a voice so soft only Tony would hear it. “If you only knew how happy that makes me, mein Schafes.”

Tony blinked up at him, surprised but pleasantly so. He had felt that Bucky’s competitive side came from a good place, but he was blindsided by what that could mean - how rare it might be, or how it would affect his Steve. Emotions he wasn’t ready for rose in his throat, and it was by sheer will power that he pulled it together. After all, they were still in public. 

“Is this your way of asking me to let him win the next game, my love?” he teased Steve with a practiced smile. 

His smile might have been enough to fool strangers and the curious onlookers watching them walk by arm in arm, but not his husband. Steve shook his head no, and with a devilish grin that only spelled trouble, he said, “No, I’m asking you to kick his ass.” 

*** 

The summer solstice festival marked the beginning of the annual weeklong holiday. All around the kingdom people could lay happy in their beds, lazy and content, sleeping in after a day of games and incredible indulgences. 

Everywhere, of course, except at the palace. There the five days following the summer solstice were the busiest days of the year. Each day was dedicated to recognizing the contributions and leadership of different people around the country, a chance to thank them for their work and listen to their perspectives. The first two days were designed as day-long expos on the sciences and engineering, followed by the arts and literature. Professionals and exceptional students in the field were hosted at the royal palace, and for Steve and Tony it was a humbling experience to meet those whose views of the country were different and often better informed than theirs. 

More than that, the palace was never as alive as when it hosted dozens of children and teenagers. It wasn’t unheard of for the palace to receive guests, but there was something special about the joy and exuberance that children brought with them. Maybe it was because they didn’t feel the pressure to act sensible and level-headed the way adults did. Since their presentations were in the mornings, the students had a full audience of leading experts in their fields, family, and their kings. It was treat to watch the enthusiasm bright in their eyes when their ideas and projects were praised, especially when someone took the time to explain the value of their contribution and described how their little school projects could be folded into a bigger vision and lead to remarkable changes. 

Between the two of them, Tony was the one with a broader sense of research and technology in the kingdom. He also enjoyed a lifetime of education that Steve had only caught up with recently in a compressed period of time. So when they walked through the expos and listened to the students, Tony was the one who could make suggestions for improvement and ask technical questions, and knew enough about the science to praise the children for their exceptional work. 

As much as the students wanted to impress Tony, however, it was usually Steve whom they gravitated to in their excitement. Steve couldn’t ask detailed technical questions, but instead he was curious to know how they’d even started to think about their project. When one little girl admitted she’d gotten into laser technology because it was the only way to get back at her brother for cutting her ponytails off, Steve had spluttered with laughter and high-fived her for revenge well done. One teenager had authored a history of food in old Machtberg on her own, going back to the earliest known settlers before the Middle Ages and how each distinct wave of immigration affected the food culture of their country all to disprove her father’s theory that burgers didn’t exist in Consone before the arrival of American veterans following World War II. Unfortunately, she had only proved her father right, but also brought to light many exciting and unexpected effects of the food immigrants brought with them on the kingdom, the biggest of which was the expansion of agriculture through unification. Steve had spent nearly an hour listening as she pointed to different components of their dinner and talked about how pistachios had once been accepted as currency because of their rarity, or how an inadvertent consequence of World War I was that mare’s milk became preferable to cow’s milk in Machtberg. 

“Our army was unprepared, we were too few to defend the country’s borders. When the war broke out, my grandfather moved our people up the mountain for safety,” Tony explained later that night when it was just the two of them in bed. “There he could defend the perimeter, but it was not easy to grow food. It was a long war, and cows do not fare as easily in mountains as horses. Many farmers abandoned their cows in the first winter. My father was only able to repay their families for their losses after the second war, once we developed our wealth through his military investments.”

After a long day actively engaging with others, being ‘on’ and speaking to strangers from morning through the evening, they had shut their door on the world and fell into bed together. Steve only slept on his back, so he stretched out and pulled Tony in close. They slotted together like two halves of a whole, Tony tucked under Steve’s arm and his cheek resting on Steve’s chest. Steve barely had the energy to speak anymore, but the presentations and conversations from the day had left him with so many questions. All he could do now was ask them quietly into Tony’s soft hair between chaste kisses and the absent touch of his fingers drawing figures over Tony’s back. 

Steve knew from studying the history of the kingdom that before King Howard’s exceptional intelligence and advanced weapons technology Machtberg had been a simple country of miners. They were a small enough country that the wealth of the mountain had been considerable in its time, but there were many facts he knew without truly understanding. 

“How come King Howard invited American soldiers after the war?” he wondered after a long, meditative silence. 

Tony hummed in place of shrugging. “I am told it was my mother,” he answered when his thoughts settled. “That she feared the Wars were consequences of a people who could not overcome social divisions in a diverse society. My father’s official reason was that no soldier who served honorably deserved second-class rights,” Tony said with a sigh, as if reciting a memorized sound clip. “Whatever the reason, the economy benefited greatly from their arrival. We lost many men in the war, and the young American soldiers brought their families. Without them, our economy would not have advanced as it did.”

Steve had heard rumors now and then about King Howard and the man he was before he lost his Queen. He had been adventurous and bold before he met the young _Marchesa_ from the Savoy-Carignano family. For the crown prince, it was love at first sight, but h is reputation and intelligence preceded him. Even at sixteen the Marchesa knew to avoid a man who spilled rumors of infidelity in every city he visited. And to be the queen of a poor mining country seemed less enticing than a future as a duchess or dame in a more advanced country, such as England or Denmark. 

After her rejection, the crown prince returned to his country. Rumors of his wild escapades ended with a mysterious silence, until gradually, after nearly a year of diligent effort, Howard made himself known to the world again through his inventions and his rising power in military technology. As Europe advanced into the Second World War, cash poured into Machtberg from around the world. News spread of the crown prince reinvesting in the kingdom, advancing the infrastructure beyond their wealthier contemporaries, and after the passing of the old king, King Howard lifted restrictions on immigration for qualified educators, scientists, and medical care professionals. Given the rising threat of anti-Semitism and the Third Reich, a large number of Jewish families resettled in Machtberg. There, behind newly reinforced walls of the King’s own design and the natural protection of the mountain, they were finally safe. 

On the Marchesa’s eighteenth birthday the King again extended an offer of marriage. Within a week, Maria ended the courtship of a Danish prince and ran to the young King of Machtberg. Together they saw the dawn of a new kingdom. They weathered World War II better than most European countries, safe in the shelter of the mountain and profiting wildly from the weapons Howard contributed to world history. 

But despite their people’s continued blessings, the King and Queen were repeatedly denied the gift they wanted above all. As the years passed, the king’s counsel grew more explicit in their advice to find a new Queen, one who could provide a healthy heir. On every occasion, the King refused. 

His faith in his Queen was rewarded soon after her thirty-fourth birthday when they received news that her latest pregnancy had advanced into the twentieth week. After so many unlucky years, they were finally expecting a healthy baby boy. 

The months that followed were their happiest days. The kingdom celebrated the happy news widely, and gifts poured in from far and wide for the mother-to-be. Nobody could have known then how the long-awaited birth of their future king would end the life of their beloved young Queen. 

Without ever knowing her, Tony inherited much from his mother. He inherited her eyes, her reserve. He inherited the many gifts she made for him during her pregnancy, and the countless letters she wrote to him sharing her everyday thoughts and her wish to finally meet him. She wanted most desperately to see the man he would grow to be. The letters she wrote to him were the only glimpse Tony had of the woman his mother had been, of the dreams she had for herself and for him. 

Among the hopes and dreams Maria shared in her letters, there was always one unwavering constant: her confidence in her son. She had no doubt that Tony would become a remarkable man, a man who would do for the world what his father had done for their people. 

Steve continued drawing absent patterns over Tony’s arm without saying a word. He had learned to give Tony the space to lose himself in thought, as he often did when thinking of his mother. 

“May she rest peacefully,” Steve eventually murmured into Tony’s hair, following it with a kiss. Tony stirred in his arms and glanced up at Steve looking dazed and a little lost. Steve smiled back at him fondly, then pressed up to kiss Tony’s forehead softly, a lingering, unhurried kiss that left Tony pliant and warm and nearly smiling again. 

“Wherever she is, I pray she overlooks the pies and is comforted to know there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect her son,” he told Tony. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make you happy.”

They both knew Tony didn’t believe in an afterlife, just like they both knew Steve did. In the early days it had been a source of frustration, but Steve had learned that the idea of an all-powerful creator made Tony uncomfortable in the same way Tony understood how after watching thousands of young soldiers wasted away in battle, it brought Steve peace to think it wasn’t for nothing. Now, Tony only smiled when Steve spoke of his faith. Whether he believed it was true did not deny the intended sentiment. 

“I love you,” Tony told him with a smile that left Steve swallowing down a knot of emotion. “But Steve, my love, you ate nine and a half pies in less than four minutes! Who could overlook such an absurd number of pies?”

Steve didn’t mean to laugh, but Tony’s words caught him by surprise. Tony’s smile grew more bright and irresistible until he pressed forward and quieted Steve’s laughter with a playful and uncoordinated mess of a kiss. Steve smoothed his fingers through Tony’s soft hair and drew him in closer, unable and unwilling as ever to resist his husband. 

“I won, didn’t I?” Steve teased him in return, and Tony barely gave himself the time to roll his eyes before he was on his husband again to kiss the cheeky smirk off his face. 

When they parted for breath, Steve was on the verge of laughter again. “Perhaps you are right,” he conceded, “but never forget, mein Schafes. It is only my appetite for you that is insatiable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh the chapter was getting so long ~~for someone with my limited patience~~ so there will be one more chapter for their anniversary.


	6. Interlude: In sickness and in health

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cut to an entirely different kind of foe, one that Steve (despite his best efforts) can't punch in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the sweetest cheerreader I could have ever asked for, [SuperstringSymphony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperstringSymphony/pseuds/SuperstringSymphony), who so generously donated to Jess Guilbeaux's college fund!! I love you, lady, thank you for ALL THE YELLING!!!

Tony’s working hours were the palace’s worst kept secret. Whether it was intuited from the wide variety of innovative products that went on the global market year after year, or some enterprising staff member let it slip to the press, the people of Consone were well aware their monarch did not spend his days kicking back at the palace feasting on powdered bon-bons. Their respect and support meant everything to Tony, so when circumstances conspired to prevent him from working, Tony fought back tooth and nail. 

As often was the case, it was Steve who noticed the change first. In difference to Steve, Tony slept peacefully. If he slept facing Steve, he’d be on his side with his head pillowed on Steve’s chest, one arm thrown over Steve’s middle and the other curled behind Steve’s broad shoulders. When he faced away, he pressed his back flush against Steve’s warm side and loosely hugged Steve’s arm, trapping it close to himself so he could use Steve’s upper arm for a pillow throughout the night. Neither of them rolled or spread out in their sleep; at worst, Tony sometimes nuzzled too much into Steve’s thick bicep and created a gap between their bodies that inevitably woke him from the unexpected chill of his bare back. 

His experience with Steve’s nightmares made Tony responsive to the smallest changes between them, so Steve already knew something serious had happened when he had to shake Tony awake one morning. It was an otherwise forgettable spring morning, with heavy gray clouds weighing over the city and rain tickling the window panes. The sun wasn’t ready to come up yet, but if his husband slept in any longer, he’d be late for his first appointment of the day. 

Steve leaned over Tony and gently brushed his hair out of the way to better see his face. His skin was too warm and unusually sweaty to the touch, and as the realization set in, Steve tried his best not to let his old fears of being left behind take root. This was nothing like what his mother had suffered silently, this was not his father walking away into the night. There was no question that Tony wasn’t suffering anything more severe than the flu. And yet Steve couldn’t help but stare. When he put his mind to it, his husband was larger than life. Tony was vibrant, confident, and as generous as he could be intimidating. 

But curled in on himself beside Steve, he looked smaller than ever before. For one flashing second Steve’s reptilian brain wanted nothing more than to gather Tony against his body and shield him from the world, as if the flu might be a threat he could fight away like any loathsome opportunist.

Before Steve recognized what he had done, Tony groaned in complaint and pushed against his chest to be let go. Steve eased him back onto the mattress, and he followed him closely to brush his lips over Tony’s forehead, lingering intentionally, then to be sure, he pressed his cheek against Tony’s clammy skin. 

“You’re burning up, mein Schafes. I’m calling a doctor,” he said with a pinched, worrying frown. Tony couldn’t have cared less. When he mulishly insisted that all he wanted to do was sleep, Steve changed tact. “You can sleep as long as you like, you’re staying home today.”

“No!” Tony grunted emphatically, and before Steve could do much to stop him, Tony tried to push himself upright in bed. His arms, otherwise so strong and capable, wobbled under his weight. He struggled to open his eyes, and when he did, he couldn’t focus. 

Steve’s heart ached to see his husband so pale. He reminded himself that it wasn’t unnatural to get sick; everyone caught a cold or the flu at some point. It was nothing to be so worried about. But all Steve could think about was how he’d never seen Tony’s lips so chapped and so nearly white. 

“Mein Schafes, you’re not leaving this bed,” Steve told him in a steady, patient tone. 

“I’m… I am busy today, meetings; I cannot,” Tony mumbled, partly to himself. He turned his body towards Steve and immediately sagged into Steve’s side, nosing into Steve’s throat. Almost any other circumstance, and Steve’s heart would have melted with affection. But Tony hadn’t meant to lean into him, he simply wasn’t able to hold himself up. Steve did his best to temper his concern by wrapping his arms around his husband and nuzzling his hair. A part of him wanted to be frustrated and angry, but Tony so unexpectedly frail made it very easy for Steve to remember what really mattered. 

He brought his arms up around Tony’s body again, cradling him close without squeezing too hard. “This is not an argument, Tony,” Steve whispered, lowering his voice in his effort not to sound too stern. His husband was not a soldier, this was not an order. A partner was not an equal if Steve could so easily dictate his choices. 

“Please,” he tried instead. “If you could see yourself through my eyes… be kind to my husband, mein Schafes. Don’t ask me to watch him suffer a fever so carelessly.”

From his comfortable home in the soft skin of Steve’s throat, Tony whined, loud and shamelessly plaintive. 

“Cheap shot,” he mumbled with an unhappy pout clear in his muffled voice. “How dare—”

“Tony, you’re sick. Would you let me out of the palace if it was me?”

A short silence hung between them until Tony sighed his surrender. He didn’t say a word, but Steve thanked him all the same, kissing the crown of his head and easing them back under the covers. He pulled Tony against his side again, and despite his earlier reluctance, Tony easily followed his lead now, pressing so close that he all but draped his full body over Steve. 

Grateful though he was, there was something discomforting about Tony yielding without a fight. Steve tried not let the thought overwhelm him, so while he rubbed one hand over Tony’s shoulders to distract them both, he reached for the phone at his bedside table to make the necessary calls. 

Except, who would he call? He wanted a doctor to look Tony over, but beyond such a general goal, the thought of allowing anyone to see Tony so vulnerable made him irrationally defensive. If Steve had it his way, nobody would see Tony until the color was back in his cheeks and his words didn’t slur together. 

In the end, Steve admitted to himself that at minimum, they needed to reschedule Tony’s meetings and bring in a trustworthy doctor. He only needed one person to accomplish both tasks. He called Pepper. 

Between the warmth of Steve’s body and his absent massage of Tony’s neck and shoulders, Tony had fallen back to sleep. He snored softly through the congestion, and privately Steve thanked god for the mercy of sleep. Carefully, he pulled the covers up over Tony’s shoulders. At first it was only to keep Tony warm, but for every increment Steve pulled the blanket farther up, the more he liked that Tony was hidden from view. The unhealthy sheen of his sickly pale skin made Steve wish anew that he could take it all from him. Why did the cold get Tony and not Steve instead? Steve didn’t have assigned duties for the next two weeks, and more importantly, he didn’t feel the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders the same way Tony did. Steve was only a figurehead, an ambassador at best. Tony was instrumental to the economy. As part of the unification, Tony leveraged global profit from Stark Industries to mitigate the cost of improving Terrini’s outdated infrastructure. They needed roads, railways, and better hospitals, and Tony committed his wealth to making it happen. 

It didn’t matter that hundreds of outstanding engineers worked in SI’s research and development alongside Tony every day, or that Tony’s momentary absence would not lead to a deficit. SI was Tony’s commitment to their people; working was his duty. So for him to give in and stay home as easily as he did, Steve could only imagine how awful he felt. 

By the time Pepper let herself into their bedroom, Steve had the covers pulled up well over Tony’s ears and his face turned so Pepper couldn’t see more than some of Tony’s unruly hair over the covers. Even so, Steve took the precaution of gently cupping one hand over Tony’s face while finger combing his hair with the other, shielding him almost entirely from view. 

Pepper didn’t bat an eye. She pulled up a chair, opened her schedule for the day, and got to work. 

“I called Dr. Betz, Natasha is on her way to personally escort her to the palace,” Pepper began with an unflappable calm that Steve appreciated now more than ever. “The four scheduled meetings can be postponed without major consequences, I will make those calls personally. The only time sensitive appointment this week is in two days with the US Secretary of State.”

“Inform them that I will take the meeting,” Steve said before Pepper had to ask. “If other calls or meetings come up, either schedule them for next month or direct them to me. Until Dr. Betz arrives, bring me something for his fever. A lot of tea, and a bowl of room temperature water with some towels. And inform the staff that I don’t want any service without explicit invitation while he is recovering. You and Natasha are welcome as needed, but that door is closed to all others.”

Pepper’s only outward sign of confusion was a small wrinkle between her eyebrows. “With all due respect, it is part of their job to care for His Majesty. You can trust them.”

“This isn’t about trust, Pepper,” Steve lied without so much as a second thought. “His Majesty is my husband, and unless Dr. Betz feels that Tony needs specialized care, I will care for him.”

The thought of anyone else seeing his husband so vulnerable, his eyes unfocused from his head cold and shivering with a fever - it angered Steve to the point of violence. The public shared so much of their lives, but he would not let any of them have this intimacy. No one should know how he frowned every time Steve washed his hands and feet with a cool, wet cloth, recognize his thin, quivering groans of pleasure over leisurely foot rubs, or ache over the quiet sounds of discomfort and pain Tony whined into Steve’s shoulder when he sought comfort. 

Before millions of their people and their officiating marriage counselor, Steve and Tony had sworn to stand at each other’s sides in sickness and in health, until death do them part. And Steve had every intention of keeping his promise.


	7. Interlude: A proposal

The morning after his mother’s midnight intervention was meant to be the end of their fledgling relationship. Steve had collected his rumpled, day-old uniform from every corner of Tony’s library, bedroom, and sauna, resisted what could have been their last kiss, and braved the walk of shame back to his designated guestroom. Neither of them had been happy about it, but Sarah’s words were too true. Steve could not turn his back on his people, and certainly not for something as fickle as love. For them, there was no room for love. Tony needed a queen to give him an heir, and for Steve, a queen was an important strategic opportunity. If he could find the right person, a partner who had a clear vision of the future their people deserved and the willingness to work and sacrifice for it, her support and their children would only solidify the leadership of their new democracy. 

Tony kept his promise to take Steve under his wing. He gave Steve a domestic model of the Stark cell phone, one that precious few had access to outside of Machtberg. In difference to the Stark phone dominating most of the global market, the domestic phone boasted features otherwise unheard of, including guaranteed worldwide reception. In that first year especially, Steve was attached to his phone like a lifeline. Terrini’s foreign minister, Peggy Carter, was often at Steve’s side for him to lean on for the big questions, but if he was honest, the small problems were the ones that caused him most frustration. He couldn’t ask Peggy how he was meant to blow his nose at a restaurant with cloth napkins, it was too embarrassing. Asking Tony felt natural. Why was it so wrong for him to handle money now, and would he make a fool of himself if he pushed back against the equerries who now handled all of Steve’s purchases? If Germany took down swastikas and Nazi symbols, why does Spain still treat Franco’s bull as a national icon? Why do Japanese toilets play music? (Speaking of music: why is Eurovision so important? And who invited Australia?) 

After two years of unwavering friendship and support, Tony was the first person Steve called when the doctors gave him the worst news imaginable. He couldn’t remember where Tony had been at the time, but he knew that Tony was at his side within hours. Tony stayed with him as Steve’s whole world slipped through the cracks between his fingers. Sarah had never told Steve she was sick; she hadn’t told anyone. Her cancer had spread before any symptoms were noticed. The treatment would not be a cure, not for her, so she chose instead to relieve her son of that burden as long as she could. 

She promised him she was at peace. She promised him she was anxious to see his father again. 

Steve had been seventeen when he found his father’s body, cold, filthy, and forgotten in an unmarked grave among his men. There had been no time to panic or grieve. The starving desperate militia had turned to Steve for leadership, and with so many lives depending on him, Steve had managed to compartmentalize and carry on. But far from the horrors of war and with many hours to prepare, Steve never managed to find the right words to say goodbye. 

Tony never left his side. He helped Steve address his people when Steve didn’t think he could breathe without crying, and he arranged the funeral when Steve couldn’t function. He was at Steve’s side through his coronation, and behind closed doors, where Steve had the privacy to fall apart, Tony stayed so Steve didn’t have to be alone. Steve didn’t had never learned to be alone, and the sudden silence was deafening. During his childhood their home on the farm had only been big enough for two rooms: one with beds, and one with a stove. Steve slept less than five feet from his parents until the war. Once he and his mother moved to a modest two-bedroom flat in Fiorera, Terrini’s capital, Steve spent the first month or so sleeping on the floor in his mother’s room. There was simply too much empty space for him to feel safe and his mattress was too soft. 

So Tony stayed with him. He shared Steve’s bed and held him through the night, comforting him to sleep and reminding Steve that he wasn’t alone each time he jolted awake. 

It wasn’t until months later in Toulouse when by some miracle they stayed on the same floor at the same hotel. They were attending a panel on food scarcity and climate change. That’s what they were meant to do, anyway. On the first night, Rhodes had allowed Steve into Tony’s suite. Steve had only meant to invite Tony to dinner that first night to thank Tony for all his help and to show him that he was doing better, that he had found an even keel again. 

Steve never meant to kiss him. 

When Rhodes checked on Tony shortly after, Tony explained Steve’s absence by saying he’d gone to bed early and sent Rhodes away to enjoy dinner with the rest of his team. Nobody could have guessed Steve was already in Tony’s bed, and that he had no intention of leaving until the next morning. 

They didn’t neglect their duties so much as they got creative with their spare time. When they shared a stretch car to the entertainment organized for the second evening, Steve savored every minute on his knees. When they could have gone for a coffee or some fresh air in the intermissions between panel presentations, Tony put his AI to good use and found unoccupied offices where the two of them could make good use of the sturdy desks. 

It wasn’t until weeks later in Berlin when Bucky broke down the door to the bathroom Steve had been in for too long that their staff caught on to them. There simply was no other way to explain why they were both in there, tangled in each other’s arms with their shirts undone and their pants around their knees. Bucky stood sentry at the broken door and made sure they were decent before allowing Tony back to his table. 

Steve wasn’t as lucky. Bucky chewed him up and spat him out for causing such an unnecessary scare. When he hadn’t answered the bathroom door on Bucky’s first, second, or fifth knock, Bucky feared the worst. Stane was still presumed to be alive somewhere, it wasn’t impossible to think he’d retaliate against the king who now sat on his old throne. Bucky’d immediately sent security out looking for Steve while he took it upon himself to become a human battering ram.

All that bullshit for some blue-blood dick. 

Steve understood Bucky’s concern—really, he did. He personally thanked his security detail for their unwavering professionalism through the scare. He felt so bad about the whole mess that he resisted Tony’s whispered invitations to stress-test the backseat of the vintage Rolls he’d hired for a summit in London, or sharing his jet for their joint presentation in Sydney. 

That didn’t mean he’d turn Tony away when _he_ found ways to misdirect Rhodey. On one memorable occasion in Lisbon, Tony convinced Rhodey he was turning in early, then ran out to his balcony and climbed onto the stone railing so he could jump across the two meter gap into Steve’s arms. Steve vehemently rejected the dumbest possible plan he'd ever heard of even as Tony took the final leap, but nothing would have stopped him from catching his reckless sweetheart and hauling him to the safety of his room where he could take out his shock of adrenaline on Tony’s hide. When Steve woke up the next morning, Tony was gone and one of his bedroom doors had been taken off its hinges to serve as a bridge between their balconies. 

They would have gotten away with it all, too, if it wasn’t for the long line of purpling hickeys blooming down the back of Tony’s neck. Tony hadn’t spotted them in the mirror and Steve had been too worked up the night before to resist. He didn’t even get to wish Rhodey a good morning before he was frog-marched back to his room where his stylist could clean him up. 

Rhodey tore down the improvised bridge Tony created out of Steve’s bedroom door. Tony learned his lesson; it just wasn’t the lesson Rhodey intended. That night, Tony was back on that ledge scaring the life out of Steve one more time as he jumped the two meter gap between two fifth-storey balconies into Steve’s waiting arms. The next morning, Steve’s second bedroom door met a similar fate as its partner, but this time Tony showed Steve how to put the door back in its place so there’d be no material evidence left of their ill-advised tryst. 

Besides capitalizing on their luck abroad and Steve’s frequent calls about confounding and often contradictory social rules (what cosmic math resulted in two kiss greetings in Italy but four in France?), they relied on the most contrived reasons to make official visits to each other’s countries whenever their schedules allowed. Steve invited Tony to the first winter solstice of his rule, where side by side they watched the young students of Fiorera’s primary school perform the beautiful music celebrating the warm, guiding light of their faith through the darkest hours of the year. Machtberg had secularized aggressively after the First World War, but Tony was still nearly moved to tears watching the shared joy and passion those children exuded with every prayer and song. 

He had no such festival or celebration that winter to use as an excuse to invite Steve to Eisenturm, but when New Years Eve rolled around, Tony made it a point to whisk Steve away to his favorite castle where they could spend New Years Day like most other families in Machtberg: eating breakfast in bed and reading all day. It was an old tradition to exchange books with loved ones for Christmas, books that imparted messages or lessons for the coming year. Welcoming the new year through quiet reflection was an intentional and meaningful connection for Mächtingen, and who they did it with spoke volumes of the relationships they valued most. Steve had never heard of such a tradition before, so Tony had the pleasure of introducing him to it in a way that made sense for them. 

Since they hadn’t exchanged books over Christmas, Tony took Steve to the library maintained in the castle. They set a timer for twenty minutes and spent every second of that time finding a book for the other to read. 

Steve gave Tony a book of centuries old folk stories that his parents told him before bed when he was a young boy. In return, Tony gave him Dag Hammarskjöld’s _Markings_ , a sincere effort by a politician of note who tried to defend the vulnerable of the world and sought his peace and his grounding in his faith and in his poetry. 

They settled on a couch overlooking the waterfall rushing under the strong, arched foundations of the castle. At first they found a way to lie together on the couch, limbs tangled into obscurity and their heads resting on the same couch cushion as they read. But as the day wore on, Steve found himself needing the support to sit up and focus, while Tony gravitated to the thick pelt near the fire where the hypnotic flames and crackling logs helped transport him to a time when the magic of fairy tales still skimmed the horizon of reality. 

Hours after the sun set and well into the night, Tony finished his book and made his way back to Steve, who was still lingering on some pages in Hammarskjöld’s memoir. 

“My heart would break if you looked at me the way you look at those pages.”

Steve startled out of his thoughts and it took him a moment to find Tony standing beside him. Tony smiled back at him when Steve’s gaze finally focused on him, and he sunk back on the couch to find his place under Steve’s protective arm. 

“I think I will need your help with some of these pages, Tony. They’re going over my head.”

Tony breathed him in deeply as he settled into Steve’s easy comfort. “You did not look confused. Where were you?”

At first Steve didn’t answer. He pressed his cheek against the top of Tony’s head, quiet and unmoving, as if he needed time to find his feet again. Then, he picked up the book at the page he had left off and read, 

“ _What makes my loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: that I have only my own burden to bear._ ”

The words needed time to find their place, touching on different emotions along the way until Tony could pick through and be honest with himself about how they made him feel. Sarah’s words returned to him about his and Steve’s duties, about whom they should love above all else. Even now Tony knew she was right. 

“I love you, Tony,” Steve whispered, a confession that under any other circumstances would have left Tony elated and so deeply relieved. He had not been brave enough to speak those words yet in his lifetime. “Every chance to see you, to share in your life, it brings me unspeakable joy. But I am not meant to see you,” he finished in a quiet, tired voice. “And I am not meant to share in your life. We can’t do this forever.”

Tony pulled away from under Steve’s arm so he could sit facing Steve on the couch. As Steve straightened to return his attention, Tony took Steve’s hands in his and brought them to his lips, kissing the back of his hands one after another. “May we have this a little longer, Steve? We have the rest of our lives to give to duty and to our people. Can we have this year for ourselves?”

After all, if Machtberg tradition was to mean anything, they had started their new year as they intended to finish it: together. Steve’s glum expression gradually lifted, until eventually he smiled, bashful in his eager hope. 

“One year, for us.”

*** 

They didn’t get two months. 

Bucky and Rhodey quickly learned that the only chance they had of reining in their respective monarchs was to join forces. By combining their efforts and bridging their communication, at least one of them was always likely to know where both of them were. When Rhodey spotted Steve and Tony dancing in a dark corner of a club where Tony had only meant to get a drink, his first action was to text Bucky to let him know Steve was safe. When Bucky woke to the sound of an unusual crash in Steve’s apartment and rushed in to eliminate the threat, he found the two of them giggling in a tangle of bedsheets on the floor beside the bed, rubbing their heads where they had clearly tumbled over the edge like overeager teenagers. Bucky had cursed them out and stalked back to his own place where he texted Rhodey to let him know both idiots were safe from everything except their own damn selves. 

So when on Valentine’s Day Bucky got a call from Rhodey, he already knew what his counterpart had to say. He dropped what he was doing and picked up the phone with a tired sigh. 

“It’s eight o’clock,” Rhodes said with a bored drawl. “Do you know where our monarchs are?”

Bucky was already making his way upstairs to see whether Steve was getting ready for bed as he’d promised. “Mine’s been suspiciously quiet,” he admitted as he knocked and made his way in. 

Steve was sitting on his couch in pajamas with a heating pad tucked behind his lower back for comfort while he read the sports pages he hadn’t had time for that morning. He looked up at Bucky with a question clear in his expression, since Bucky had no reason to walk into his apartment after hours. 

But for Bucky, the world had suddenly turned very, very cold. There was an urgency to the situation that he didn’t want Steve to hear, but as his friend, there was no way to avoid it either. 

“Steve,” he said with a forced calm. “Did you and Tony have plans tonight?”

Steve’s curious confusion turned stiff and alert at the sound of Tony’s name. “What? No. He’s busy with the election. What’s happened, Buck?”

Bucky stepped into the apartment even though he wanted to leave. Whatever he said next, he knew his biggest problem would be keeping Steve from doing something reckless. 

“Rhodes, he’s not here,” he told Rhodey, speaking as calmly as he could for Steve’s sake. “Keep me posted.”

“What do you—what’s James saying? Buck!” Steve was on his feet and grabbing for Bucky’s phone faster than Bucky had expected, but when he shouted into the phone to get answers out of Rhodey, he’d already hung up. 

Without any answers from the source, Steve turned on Bucky with murder in his eyes. 

“Where is Tony?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky promised, speaking as calmly as he could manage. “Steve, he could be in a different bathroom of the palace for all we know: their foyer is three times the size of this apartment—”

But Steve wasn’t listening. He marched away in his rage, only shouting orders over his shoulder at Bucky as he hurried to his office. “Boots, guns! Go!”

Bucky was on his heel in an instant. “Steve, what are you—Steve!” he snapped and shut the safe where Steve kept his weapons from his time in the army. “You know we can’t do that, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Buck, he’s missing, we have to move—”

“Stop! Steve, this isn’t our fight!” Bucky shouted the words he’d done his best to avoid all these months. “You owe him nothing, Steve. You have responsibilities to your people,” he said, albeit sympathetically. “I know you care for him, but officially he’s nothing to you.”

Steve glowered at Bucky for his unsolicited judgment, and unlocked his safe again. Again Bucky pushed the door shut before Steve could get his hands on a gun or a rifle. 

“He is my friend! I’d do the same for you,” Steve snarled. “You’re either with me or against me, what’s it going to be?”

“I’m not letting you out of this building. You’re not a soldier anymore, you’re a goddamn king! Don’t make me have to use force,” Bucky finished less aggressively. “Please, Steve.”

Trapped between his fear and his duty, Steve looked ready to scream and rage at the sky. 

“What if I stay?” he asked in a sudden revelation, watching Bucky with a manic desperation. “I stay, I don’t leave the safety of my room: you take everyone and help find Tony. Please, Buck, you—if I can’t go, please, you have to, he could be in danger, please.” 

The plan wasn’t perfect and Bucky knew it. If Bucky took Steve’s security detail with him, there was still a slim chance that someone would attack their undefended king and unravel Terrini in these delicate nascent years of peace. But if he didn’t compromise somewhere, Steve would take drastic measures. Worse still, Steve would never forgive him - even if Bucky was only doing his job to keep Steve safe. 

“Fine. I’m leaving two men with you,” Bucky conceded, “I’ll take Natasha. I’ll call as soon as we find him.”

Not five minutes after Rhodes’ call, Bucky led the highly trained protective detail away from their king. Machtberg’s defensive wall left a limited number of ways in and out of the country, so Bucky packed his team into three military helicopters to cover the two nearest of four gates into the neighboring kingdom. They were put in touch with Machtberg air traffic control to help navigate through open skies far from civilian routes. 

So when by chance their helicopters intercepted a small aircraft traveling to Machtberg at high speed, they took notice. After a failed attempt to make contact with the private passenger jet, the helicopters turned formation and opened fire. The jet was still too far to fall in the line of fire, but the hostile reception was enough for the plane to change its course and avoid Machtberg altogether. 

The helicopters were not fast enough to pursue, but in the end it didn’t matter. Rhodes had reached the right people in time to shut down all movement in and out of Machtberg fast enough that they caught up with the twelve men who abducted Tony before they crossed the border. 

Eventually, they learned that these men were a mixed group of hired mercenaries who had laid a trap for Tony near the royal stables, where he often walked alone. Under regular circumstances, Tony’s absence would never have gone unnoticed. But after months of countless disappearing acts and consistent and intentionally limited communication with his security, Tony’s silence was tolerated longer than protocol demanded. Rhodes’ unusually relaxed attitude had allowed these men to get their target as far as Eisenturm’s airport. Had that plane been able to land, they may not have recovered Tony so easily. 

With luck on their side, Tony was back in his own bed within the hour with no worse injuries than a bad bump on his head where he’d been struck in the initial attack. Steve kept his promise to stay in his little two-bedroom apartment until Bucky returned, but from the moment Rhodes allowed Tony some privacy, they were on the phone with each other again, each desperate for the comfort of the other. 

It could have been a chance to grow closer, to bond through their shared trauma of those forty fearful minutes. Instead, Steve took it as a wake-up call. The consequences of their behavior had quickly become clear, and while Tony maintained that his time shared with Steve was worth the risk of occasional opportunists, Steve couldn’t take it anymore. He could not be the reason why the team protecting Tony didn’t immediately treat his disappearance as an urgent concern.

So the week after Tony’s safe return, Steve flew to Eisenturm to take Tony to dinner. It was the most difficult decision he’d ever made outside of the war, but even so, Steve had to do it in person. He loved Tony too much to end their relationship by phone. 

*** 

They usually stayed at the royal palace when Steve visited Eisenturm. Outwardly, it helped contain the gossip surrounding them, but another part of it was Steve’s limited familiarity with international cuisine. Tony took great pleasure in inviting specialized chefs from around the country to cook exciting dishes for Steve’s every visit, though his project had peaked early when Steve tried a buffet of Indian dishes and promptly fell in love with navratan korma. 

On the rare occasion that they ate outside of the palace, Pepper usually arranged for them to have two hours of absolute privacy by vacating a part of the restaurant in advance. When Tony was informed that their upcoming date would be such an event - and that the planning had happened without his awareness - he didn’t know what to think. For one fleeting heartbeat Tony feared that his abduction had left Steve shaken and afraid of returning to the palace, but it was such an absurd concept. Steve had experienced years of guerrilla warfare and witnessed horrific crimes against humanity before he reached the age of majority. There was no threat to a man like Steve in Machtberg, and to think he would avoid a place out of fear was a laughable insult. 

Pepper could not explain Steve’s unusual request, so Tony had no context for their meeting until the time that he sat down at the table across from Steve and saw it writ on his face, clear as day. 

They were over. 

“Steve, reconsider,” were the first words out of Tony’s mouth, but all Steve could give him was a bittersweet smile. 

“My feelings for you haven’t changed, sweetheart. I would never break my promise to you if it was not out of concern for your safety.”

What rational thought Tony could muster assured him he would do the same had the tables been turned. But if Tony was honest, his facade of well adjusted poise was crumbling and he had looked forward to a night of taking comfort in Steve’s effortless strength. There was a surety to Steve that grounded Tony with purpose, and he needed it now in the aftermath of his abduction more than ever. 

“I wish you allowed my security to concern themselves of my safety,” Tony sighed, expressing his frustration more than a rebuttal. 

“You are not the first to remind me that your safety is none of my business, Tony. But you know as well as I do that in my absence James will find fewer obstacles in his job, he’ll be able to protect you more effectively.” 

“We will increase security of the palace grounds; this was not on Rhodey, Steve, this has nothing to do with you—” 

“Tony, you don’t understand,” Steve interrupted him in a whisper, and Tony quieted instinctively to hear the quiet words Steve struggled to speak. “When Bucky told me what happened, I…” 

Steve’s words trailed off uncomfortably, and when the dim light in the restaurant caught Steve’s eyes just right, Tony realized they were wet with unshed tears. He couldn’t help but stare. 

“I wanted to be there, Tony. You mean so much to me, more than words can express. The thought of you alone, unsafe… god knows what they might have done to you. I didn’t know what was worse, the fear of what might happen to you, or the fact that I couldn’t do anything to help you. If James hadn’t found you so soon, I… there is nothing I wouldn’t have done to get you back,” he confessed in the end, shamefaced. “I couldn’t save my dad, I couldn’t save my mom. And last week I was powerless to help you.”

It took all of Tony’s strength to resist averting his eyes in his shame. He had been so caught up in looking forward to basking in Steve’s anchoring affection that he hadn’t put two and two together. As a teen, Steve had found his dad executed and heartlessly discarded. He did the only thing he could have then, he carried his father’s body back so that he could receive a deserved resting place. Then for his mother to keep her illness from him, leaving him to watch her waste away over several days. Tony couldn’t imagine the trauma. As much as he missed his own mother, Tony had never known her, and Howard… well, Howard’s only role in Tony’s life had been to point out Tony’s faults and weaknesses - every way Tony needed to improve to deserve the throne. His two nannies had lived long, healthy lives that were filled with love, family, and friends outside of the palace. 

As much as he and Steve had in common as orphaned sons, the lingering consequences weighed on them differently. 

“You deserve better,” Tony said when he had collected his thoughts. 

“We both do,” Steve corrected him gently. “Nothing would make me happier than to see you with a family, Tony. I see the way you care for your people, you will be an exceptional father.”

“Nothing would make you happier?” Tony muttered bitterly before he could stop himself. Before he even recognized that his hackles were up and his teeth were bared. “How can you say that you love me to the point of pain, end our relationship, and tell me to move on in the same breath?”

“I care deeply for you, and I have only ever been faithful, but do not call this a relationship,” Steve told him, lowering his voice as a counterpoint to Tony’s visceral anger. “A relationship has potential, a future. We can’t marry, Tony. I would abdicate in a heartbeat if it was that easy.”

“And I would not find a better Prince for my kingdom, but your people need you. They have not had dependable leadership for decades and you are their last tether in a new government. I would sooner see our kingdoms united than allow you to abdicate.”

The tense lines of Steve’s expression softened with Tony’s admission. It was the closest he had come to telling Steve how badly he loved him in return, and Tony felt himself grow giddy at how easily Steve understood him. 

“That would be one way to solve your food shortage,” Steve observed with a smile and a small shrug. “You’d have access to the sea.”

“Our domestic agriculture is pitiful at best,” Tony had to admit, “but our greatest shortcoming is that we have more highly skilled professionals than we have opportunities. We are already a small nation, to see so many emigrate for no more than job opportunities breaks my heart, but there is little we can do. They are teachers, engineers, and doctors, and they are eager to change the world. In a united kingdom, fewer would feel the need to leave, and they could do a great deal of good in Terrini.”

“A great deal is an understatement,” Steve huffed, more rueful than amused. “We have only one university in Terrini; we will be lucky if all children in the coming generation receive a secondary education.”

“Rails would save you the cost of investing in highways. Our trains run on clean energy, they require minimal maintenance, and we could connect even the smallest villages to bigger schools. That way every village doesn’t need a school immediately, but the children would still receive an education. We could focus our resources on hospitals and expanding local government - vocational training for the adults who are too old or disinterested in returning to an academic education—”

“After hospitals and rails the priority must be mental health services,” Steve reminded him gently. “All Terrini men and women over the age of five are dealing with trauma from the war, and few have the resources or time to seek help. Some may not even recognize their need.”

Tony’s expression turned grim, but he didn’t let it stop him. “Targeted interventions are easier,” he promised. “We can fund post-doctoral fellowships for psychologists specializing in family and trauma counselling to work out of small clinics in villages.”

“And if what we hear about Mächtingen is true, maybe we can encourage them to address the anxiety and emotional strain of their daily lives. Once a rail connects Machtberg to Terrini, it would be easy for all to escape the congestion of the city. Visit the coast, the islands. And inland we have many lakes and rivers, beautiful old villas that are now too expensive for locals to own but which can be repurposed for tourist lodging. Provide local jobs and create new forms of capital.”

Tony opened his mouth to speak, but found he couldn’t decide on what to say. He liked too much of what was so naturally coming together between them, and the more he allowed himself to consider the possibilities of uniting their kingdoms under a shared rule, the more he found he preferred it to the shortcomings present. 

“Steve?” he said softly, and Steve quickly shook whatever was on his mind to give Tony his attention. “What do you think we could achieve together if we tried?”

Steve gave him a curious look, though he shook his head to express his confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You said there is no relationship without a future,” Tony reminded him, but quickly seemed to change his mind. Under the scrutiny of Steve’s devoted attention, Tony leaned back in his seat to take a steadying breath. He wasn’t sure how many people were in the room with them, and depending on how much they had already heard, Tony wasn’t likely to have so much time to act. 

There was only so much spontaneity he was afforded in his life, but this was too good to deny. He couldn’t even know how Steve would react, he only knew he had to try. 

Tony got out of his seat and without looking away from Steve, he kneeled at Steve’s side. 

Steve’s observant eyes drew wide and his jaw dropped. 

“Tony, you,” he choked out, but he could get no further, and all around him Tony could hear echoes of feet rushing and chairs scraping across the floor outside their private room in the restaurant. Any second they’d be interrupted by people who knew better. 

“Steve Rogers, I have never known a strength as gentle as yours, or a heart so kind. I love you, Steve,” Tony told him, doing his best to give every word its due time even as he hurried to finish before Pepper was alerted. “When I dare visit the truth, I dread any future without you beside me. Others pale in comparison to you, your unwavering commitment and morality, and this—this hypothetical we can bring to life, I think it is possible. For ourselves and for our people, my love, let us try. Will you marry me?”

Shouts of shock and surprise came from the restaurant staff, while Rhodey, Pepper, and a handful of Steve’s team poured into the room to swarm around them, and if Tony hadn’t been listening with all his soul he might have missed the _‘yes’_ that spilled from Steve’s breathless lips. He bodily hauled Tony to his feet and in for a kiss, and just as easily the white noise of the world faded away. 

*** 

Months before the wedding, Tony started to feel his nerves rise into the fore. Not his nerves about the wedding or the unification; those questions were either long settled or in the process of being resolved, and he accepted his limited role in how they came to pass. As part of the plans related to the wedding, however, Pepper had raised the question of their honeymoon, and where they wished to go. Her recommendation was to stay local, where press could be contained and monitored. She reminded him of an alpine castle that was the highest royal residence in Machtberg, they would have nearly complete privacy in a place so remote and wild. There was even an old baronial estate in the northernmost mountains of Terrini she felt was suitable with its stunning views, privacy, and comfortable amenities. 

She left them a portfolio of recommendations both domestic and international. Steve enjoyed looking through it and talking to Tony about the exciting places they could go in their celebration together, but Tony had barely heard a word. 

People had sex every day, all around the world. Anal sex was common enough - many women even, who had a clear alternative, were open to it. But with a man like Steve… well. Tony had his doubts.

“Steve? You awake?” he murmured hesitantly against Steve’s chest later that night. Steve stirred against him and stretched as he settled, but he vaguely mumbled something in the affirmative. 

“Will it hurt?”

“Hm?” Steve grunted, his brow creased an uncertain frown of sleepy confusion. Tony couldn’t tell if he was struggling with the question, or struggling with being pulled into a conversation on the cusp of sleep. 

“Nothin’ will hurt you,” he eventually said, and he squeezed Tony against his side. “Safe Tony, sleep, shhh…”

Tony should have laughed and let it slide… except, in his half-asleep state there was a chance Steve wouldn’t remember this conversation by morning. It wasn’t that they were bad at communication—part of the excitement early on had been talking each other through what they wanted, what turned them on, but at least that Tony had experience with in the past. This was different. Never had Tony been allowed into a situation without practice and full information before. This was the first time he was flying blind, and without a chance to practice. These were embarrassing questions and insecurities that Tony wasn’t proud of, but by chance, he’d caught Steve about to fall asleep. With a little luck, Tony could ask his questions without his fiancé being any wiser to these irrational thoughts he couldn’t shake. 

“What if I am bad?” he breathed, hating the words even as he spoke them. “What if I ruin our honeymoon?”

“You’re perfect,” Steve slurred irritably. “Sleep, Tony, is’okay.”

“What if I am unable to do it? Or, I eat the wrong things and get us, uh. If we get dirty?”

“Sex’s messy, ‘s okay,” was all Steve managed then, though he seemed to have given up on telling Tony to sleep. 

“And you, you are not an average man, you—what if I am unable, or something tears?”

Steve blinked his eyes open and turned to Tony with an unformed question in his expression. Tony immediately quieted. What were the odds that Steve hadn’t heard so much? But as Steve pushed himself up to lean against the cushioned headboard of their bed and pulled Tony with him, his thoughtful, attentive look quickly put Tony’s last hope to rest. There was no doubt he had heard every word. 

“Tony, I… in case it hasn’t been clear, I am satisfied. I am very happy with what we have. Sex is special and wonderful because it is with you, and because we enjoy it together. There is no law that says penetrative sex is necessary, for us or for anybody else. Okay?”

“But all this time—”

“That’s only point one,” Steve interrupted him to say. 

Tony made a face. “How many points are there?”

“At least four, but I’m half asleep so forgive me if I remember more tomorrow.”

“There is no need, I understand, my love. I overreacted, and—” 

“Don’t brush it off, Tony. I think there is a need, your questions are important. I’ve been thinking about it, too, actually,” Steve admitted, and in his curiosity, Tony perked up enough to meet Steve’s steady gaze. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’ve been good about talking about what we want and like before, this should be no different,” he reminded Tony. Whether it was instinct or Steve’s sixth sense, he absently stroked his fingers down and up the back of Tony’s neck in a gentle, comforting caress. Tony shuddered at the touch and couldn’t help but relax and lean into it. 

“Tony, if we take that step on our wedding night, I want to bottom.”

Tony blinked his eyes wide open and stared back in surprise. “What? But, it will be my first time,” he couldn’t help but say. He wasn’t sure when the idea of bottoming had turned from a daunting concept to a rite of passage, but if it wasn’t for Steve’s comforting touch, Tony would have felt very wronged. 

“We might not even want to do anything, let alone something we’ve never done before. And if you want to bottom, I think it should be on a day when we have all day to ourselves. For the wedding night, we’ll be tired, it will be late ...don’t look at me like that, Tony,” he said after a beat, grinning to himself. “I’m not trying to spare you or martyr myself. Honestly, the closer we get to the wedding the less I can focus on anything else. It’s been a very long time for me.”

Tony stared at him, shocked. This was information he needed! He wanted to ask why—what was so exciting about bottoming, what did Steve like so much about it. He wanted to ask how he was so sure that Tony, who had no experience either way, could give Steve what he so clearly wanted. Suddenly the pressure felt staggering and impossible in an unexpected direction. Worse still, now there were two things Tony felt unprepared for! Two very important duties that nobody else could help him with, no books he could study or tutors who could help him. Not for the first time he toyed with the idea of crowdsourcing the details from actors in adult entertainment or from licensed sex workers, but if word ever got back to Steve about it, Tony would never hear the end of it. 

“How long has it been?” Tony asked instead, his words selected by natural curiosity before his nerves took the lead. 

Steve smiled at his question and took a moment to do the math. “Eleven years maybe? Unless I was already seventeen, I don’t remember,” he admitted, speaking around the interruption of the war. His father had been drafted when Steve was seventeen, and he had refused to let Joseph go alone. “I don’t remember the last day specifically, those days”—those happy, peaceful days before a living nightmare took over his life—“they bleed into each other. But we had a lot of fun.”

Tony didn’t ask if he was still in touch with his friends and neighbors, because for many, it was impossible to know. Some had been forcibly relocated by the war, some had been injured and withdrawn from their former lives. Many others simply didn’t survive. 

“Do you remember their names?”

“Not really, not all of them,” Steve answered with a shrug. “We were four guys and five, sometimes six girls? It wasn’t always the same people. We didn’t do anything serious, we just had dumb fun passing lazy days when we had nothing better to do. It’s not that difficult watching goats grazing.”

As he listened, Tony rolled to drape himself over Steve, loosely embracing him and resting his chin on Steve’s chest comfortably. He hummed in understanding and asked, “Have you had sex since you moved to Fiorera?”

“Seldom,” Steve said wryly. “I shared a wall with my mom, remember?”

Tony laughed before he could stop himself, then quickly hid his face against Steve’s chest where he barely contained his laughter into quiet giggling. 

“Yes, ha ha. Laugh at my misery,” Steve tried to mutter irritably, but he couldn’t help but smile or stop the rumble of amusement that Tony could feel under his body. 

“Before you, it had maybe been eight months? Ten months? It’s not as easy when your mother’s a queen. I would only pursue women, because it’d be big news if I didn’t - and they kept introducing me to thin women. That made it difficult for me. They reminded me of the mothers who starved so their children could eat, the captives we found, and it messed with my head. Then on top of that, when I did go home with someone all I could think about was, what did they want from me? Title, connections? Fame? I was so distracted about it, you wouldn’t believe how lousy I was in bed.” 

“One could be more subtle about fishing for compliments, my love,” Tony teased, and when Steve let go of the sour memories enough to smile back at him, Tony rewarded him with a soft, adoring kiss over his heart. 

“I wasn’t trying to, or even trying to be funny. There was a time I thought maybe PTSD was interfering with, uh… That I couldn’t get excited. At twenty-two that’s a scary thought, it was awful - and one time, a woman even left. I was useless to her so she just stopped in the middle of, of everything and left.”

“Her loss.”

“We were at her place, Tony!”

Steve’s unexpected cry left Tony spluttering with laughter, and this time, Steve wasn’t far behind. Soon he had Tony wrapped in his arms again, and Tony felt himself lifted closer until Steve could kiss his forehead. 

“I can’t deny I look forward to the honeymoon sex, Tony,” Steve whispered, his words too intimate even in the privacy of Tony’s apartments. “But what I am most looking forward to is spending this time with you, alone. Nothing needs to change between us, but if we take that step, I want it to be because you’re excited about it, alright? You don’t need to think about whether it will hurt. I want to bottom.” 

Tony swallowed back what felt like a dry fistful of nerves. He wasn’t sure what the right thing to say was, but he also wasn’t ready to let Steve do anything he wouldn’t do himself. 

“Forever?”

“Not forever,” Steve promised him, and Tony relaxed in his arms. “How about… the first twenty times?”

“The first twenty _times_ , or the first twenty days?”

Steve pursed his lips and made a show of thinking about it. “You’re right. First forty times.”

“Forty—Steve!”

“Alright: fifty times,” Steve changed his mind as Tony complained again. “Keep talking, Tony, this is only getting better on my end.”

“You and your end sure seem to be well at the center of attention—”

“Sixty.”

Tony shut his mouth immediately before more protests poured out of him, but he still levelled an unimpressed look at his husband-to-be. Steve watched him with a gleeful triumph until he felt Tony had repented enough. 

“Then that’s settled: the first sixty times we have penetrative sex of any kind, I bottom,” Steve decided without so much as a ‘best of two.’ Tony had half a mind to grumble and disagree, but Steve was such a mule when he wanted to be. 

And it didn’t hurt that Steve couldn’t stop smiling. He leaned in close and kissed Tony’s cheek before cupping his face gently in his hands and kissing his lips. Tony melted into him and (much too soon) decided to forgive Steve for his underhanded bargaining. 

As their lips eased apart, Steve still held Tony’s face in his hands with his thumb brushing over Tony’s cheek. Unable to resist, he leaned in for one more kiss. Then quietly, even playfully, he whispered, “If it pleases Your Majesty, your tired, old fiancé would like to sleep so he can wake up tomorrow and exist one day closer to being your husband.”

Tony pursed his lips to stifle his amusement, and solemnly answered, “I shall allow it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: In Portugal I learned that some apartments are designed so that one can safely jump from one balcony to the other in case of emergencies. I believe it is intended so that one can escape in case of a fire (i.e., if your exit is blocked because of the fire, you have a viable alternative exit). My impression was that it isn't a national law, but that it's a prevalent part of modern buildings. That said, that's not what Steve and Tony deal with here (mostly because I pictured them in the Altis Avenida Hotel, which is from the 11th century and clearly predates structural fire safety). 
> 
> Unrelated fun design fact: Portugal also handled their problem with storks nesting on poles guiding power lines really fucking well (imo) - [they designed all power poles WITH stork-approved nests](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/AR21KB/stork-nests-on-power-poles-alentejo-portugal-AR21KB.jpg) so that the storks could have homes without interfering with the power lines. 
> 
> My only lingering frustration with Portugal design choices so far is that whole mess of tearing up the stunning cobblestones in Porto's big square and replacing it all with asphalt. ASPHALT. What were you thinking, assholes?


End file.
